The Law of Piracy

Denver Journal of International Law & Policy
Volume 15 Article 2
Number 2 Winter/Spring
May 2020
The Law of Piracy

Alfred P. Rubin
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Alfred P. Rubin, The Law of Piracy, 15 Denv. J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 173 (1987).
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ARTICLES
The Law of Piracy

ALFRED P. RUBIN*
"Pirate ... Middle English from Latin pirata, from Greek peirates, 'at-
tacker,' from peiran, to attempt, attack, from peira, an attempt . . .
From Indo-European root per-."
"per- . . . To try, risk;" from which come the modern English words: fear,
peril, experience, expert, empire, and pirate.
American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language (W. Morris, ed.)
(1969), 998, 1534.
I. THE ORIGINS
A. Introduction
The word "piracy" is used in modern English in many different ways,
from a half-admiring description of the shrewd practices of an assertive
businessman cutting the corners of morality but strictly within the law, to
a highly technical legal word of art related to some crimes for which peo-
ple have been hanged. In between lie uses that relate to unrecognized
rebels, naval vessels acting beyond their authority, naval vessels acting
within their national commissions to interfere with peaceful commerce in
ways the international legal order will not tolerate, and many other
shades of meaning. The most cursory examination of learned literature,
treaty articles and national statutes shows at least six different meanings:
(1) A vernacular usage with no direct legal implications; (2) An interna-
tional law meaning related to unrecognized states or recognized states
whose governments are not considered to be empowered at international
law to authorize the sorts of public activity that is questioned, like the
Barbary States of about 1600-1830, the Malay Sultanates of about 1800-
1880, and the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands of about 1820-1830; (3)
An international law meaning related to unrecognized belligerency, like
* Alfred P. Rubin is Professor of International Law, Fletcher School of Law and Diplo-
macy, Tufts University. This article is a partial product of his work as Charles H. Stockton
Professor of International Law at the Naval War College, Newport, RI, 1981-1982. In a
slightly expanded version it forms the first chapter of a book on the law of piracy now in the
publication process at the Naval War College.
DEN. J. INT'L L. & POL'Y VOL. 15:2,3
Confederate States commerce raiders and privateers during the American

Civil War of 1861-65 in the eyes of the Federal Government of the United
States; (4) An international law meaning related to the private acts of
foreigners against other foreigners in circumstances making criminal ju-
risdiction by a third state acceptable to the international community de-
spite the absence of the usual territorial or nationality links that are nor-
mally required to justify the extension abroad of national criminal
jurisdiction; (5) Various special international law meanings derived from
particular treaty negotiations; and (6) Various municipal (i.e., national,
domestic) law meanings defined by the statutes and practices of individ-
ual states. It is possible to elaborate this list to take account of ambiguous
or inconsistent state practice and diplomatic correspondence, special
technical interpretations within the learned international legal writings
and different states' positions as to particular incidents, and other tradi-
tional modes of legal analysis.
All of these uses of the word "piracy" have been argued from time to
time to rest on classical writings and precedents. In the days leading up
to the Westphalian settlement of Europe in 1648, citations to Greek and
Latin sources were a major element of legal argumentation. Those renais-
sance legal arguments and the municipal law of the European sea powers,
particularly England, purported to rest on Roman law and usage. Thus,
to understand fully the modern meanings of the term "piracy" it is neces-
sary first to examine the Greek and Latin writings and Roman usages.
Time changes the meaning of words, and it is an error in scholarship
to attribute to ancient or even not very ancient authors the full range of
implication that a word carries in current usage. An amusing example ap-
pears in the 14th century Middle English poem, Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight where the Green Knight, entering King Arthur's great din-
ing hall, asks, "Where is . . . the governour of this gyng?" and it can be
shown by analyzing the uses of the word "governour" and "gyng"
("gang") in other medieval works that the modern cockney connotation of
jocular contempt that might be implied from the context of the Green
Knight's speech is simply not there.'
When, in 1811, Sir T.S. Raffles, the British Lieutenant Governor of
Java, wrote to Lord Minto, the Governor-General of India, that "It is un-
fortunately the practice in some of the Malay States rather to encourage
the young nobles of high rank, especially those of the Rajah's own extrac-
tion, whose maintenance would fall otherwise upon the Rajah himself, to
subsist themselves by piratical practices" 2 he was using the word in a
non-legal sense insofar as the attitudes of the Malays was being ex-
plained. At the same time, from its European legal implications he con-
1. A.C. SPEARING, CRITICISM AND MEDIEVAL POETRY 7 (2d ed. 1972).

2. S. RAFFLES, MEMOIR OF THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF SIR THOMAS STAMFORD
RAFFLES 45-46 (1830), printing what appears to be a selection of the original letters of her
husband.
1987 THE LAW OF PIRACY
cluded that suppressive activities by the British Navy might be justifiable

as a matter of international law. He seems to have been conscious of the
two meanings of the word when he advised that the British in the first
instance, rather than bearing the burden themselves of sweeping the "pi-
rates" from the seas, should "oblige every Rajah to refuse to every
description of pirates . . . any sort of assistance or protection in his own
territories."3 This suggestion, with much legal difficulty, became trans-
lated into British policy and assertions of international law over a period
of sixty or seventy years.
In the light of this and similar persistent confusions, before embark-
ing on an analysis of the precise meaning of the word "piracy" as used in
ancient texts it might be useful to set forth a few of the many instances in
which the word or its derivatives has been used by translators to reflect
their own ideas as to when it is appropriate to use it despite the fact that
the word does not appear in any form in the text being translated. Since
so much nineteenth and twentieth century writing about "piracy" cites
ancient usages that in fact exist only in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
tury purported translations, but not in the ancient texts, it might be pos-
sible to clear away some common misconceptions of our own time, when
some citations to earlier scholars, which in turn rest on still earlier schol-
arly citations, which in turn appear to rest on non-legal translations of
words that have no connection with the ancient conception of "piracy,"
seem to have become conventional wisdom; i.e., seem to be accepted as
correctly reflecting the ancient concepts merely because so often repeated
in scholarly writing.
Coleman Phillipson, whose analysis of classical conceptions of inter-
national law is justly famous to the degree that it seems to have almost
cut off later scholarship, wrote: "In the Homeric age the practice [of
"piracy"] was looked upon as a creditable . . . means of enrichment."4
Without disputing Phillipson's point, which will be examined more
closely in Part B, it is interesting to check his citations. These include
Homer's Iliad," and Odyssey,' and Thucydides' History of the Pelopon-
nesian War.' In fact, in none of these places cited by Phillipson does the
word "peirato" or any of its derivatives appear in the original Greek.8
3. Id. at 48. The entire letter, beginning at 39, is worth reading, especially pp. 45-46, 48,
77-82, for its eloquent appeal to the concept felt by Raffles to be embodied in the word
"pirate." He felt that what the young nobles were doing was not "piracy" at international
law, but should have been a crime under the law of the Malay sultanates from which the
"pirates" apparently derived their licenses to interfere with peaceful shipping.
4. 2 C. PHILLIPSON, THE INTERNATIONAL LAW AND CUSTOM OF ANCIENT GREECE AND
ROME 370 (1911).
5. 1 HOMER, THE ILIAD i, 367; vi, 58; ix, 588; xii, 64 (A.T. Murray trans. 1971).
6. 1 HOMER, THE ODYSSEY xv; 385, 426; xvii, 425 (A.T. Murray trans. 1960).
7. THUCYDIDES, THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR i, 5-7, 8 (C.F. Smith trans. 1959).
8. 1 HOMER, THE ILIAD 30-31, 266-267, 424-425 (A.T. Murray trans. 1971); 2 PHILLIPSON,
supra note 4, at 458-459; 1 HOMER, THE ODYSSEY 72-73, 320-321 (A.T. Murray trans. 1960);
2 HOMER, THE ODYSSEY iii, 102-103 (A.T. Murray trans. 1953); THUCYDIDES, supra note 7, at
Instead, the original Greek uses derivatives of the word "diapertho" or

the word "leia."10 Indeed, even if the word "peirato" did appear in the
places cited in Homer, it would not indicate a clear usage of the word,
since, aside from some clearly inappropriate contexts, what most com-
monly appears is a formula of words that seems to have been a customary
greeting addressed to strangers:
Is it on some business, or do ye wander at random over the sea, even
as 'pirates,' who wander hazarding their lives and bring evil to men of
other lands?"
This particular formula, which does not include the word "peirato" or
any of its derivatives in the original Greek, is repeated in many places,
including Hesiod 2 and Thucydides26 And yet it is the very Thucydides
passage not using the word "peirato" or any of its derivatives that is
mentioned by at least one very eminent twentieth century scholar as evi-
dence that "piracy" in the modern sense was accepted as legitimate in
ancient Greece.14 Obviously, it was not "piracy" that was legitimate, but
something else, labeled with a different word, that may or may not have
been analogous to the modern legal conception of "piracy."
It may be significant that the more or less standard glossary, Auten-
rieth's Homeric Dictionary, defines "peiran . . . -ato" as "test, attack,
make trial of, put to proof, contend with" etc., but does not record any
usage in Homer that would correspond with a sense of illegality or even
roving to seize the property of others regardless of legality.'"
Similarly, in Herodotus's history of the Persian War, the passage
most frequently cited as mentioning "piracy" does not use the Greek
word or any of its derivatives, and that passage is translated properly as
saying merely the coming of "Bronze men of the sea" was predicted by an
oracle.' 6
Perhaps the most egregious anomaly of translation is in the frequent
citation to an historical episode in which the citizens of the "polis" of
Halonnesos refused to receive their property back from Philip of
Macedon as a gift, but insisted that they had never lost title since the
8-9, 12-13.
9. "To destroy utterly, sack, waste, always of cities." LIDDELL & Scorr, GREEK-ENGLISH
LEXICON 354 (8th ed. 1897).
10. "Booty, plunder." Id. at 881; the word is "leis" in the Epic dialect, id. at 889.
11. Nestor's interview with Telemachus, 2 HOMER, THE ODYSSEY iii, 73 (A.T. Murray
trans. 1953).
12. HESIOD, THE HOMERIC HYMNS & HOMERICA 352, 356-357 (H.G. Evelyn-White trans.
1954). The first 177 lines of this Hymn are addressed to the Delian Apollo; the rest, includ-
ing the lines cited here, to the Pythian Apollo. See also HOMER, THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER 349
n. 1 (T.A. Buckley trans. 1891).
13. THUCYDIDES, supra note 7, at i, 5. The formula is different, but again the word
derives from "leisteia," not "peirato."
14. A. ZIMMERN, THE GREEK COMMONWEALTH 237-238 (5th rev. ed. 1961).
15. AUTENRIETH, HOMERIC DICTIONARY 252 (R.P. Keep trans. 1885).
16. HERODOTUS, THE PERSIAN WARS, 462-463 (A.D. Godley trans. 1931).
capture had been by "pirates," who lack the legal power to alter rights to
title in property. But the Greek original does not contain the word
"peirato" or any of its derivatives."
As for Roman sources,'8 again some of the most often cited writings
purportedly defining the classical conception of "piracy" do not use the
word in either its Greek or Latin ("pirata")form. For example, Cicero, in
his second speech Against Verres, does not mention "pirata" in the pas-
sage cited time and again by renaissance and later scholars as one of the
sources of the law of "piracy." The word he uses is "praedones."'9 And
Livy's translator gives a totally distorted impression of the legal relations
between the Great Pompey's son, Sextus Pompey, and Octavian Caesar,
building on the distorted picture painted by the not wholly impartial
Livy himself, in this passage:
When Sextus Pompey again made the sea dangerous through acts of
piracy [latrociniis],and did not maintain the peace to which he had
agreed, Caesar undertook the inevitable war against him and fought
two drawn naval battles.20
In the original Latin the word "pirata" or its derivatives does not
appear.2
There are other anomalies in this passage that point out the need for
great circumspection in drawing far-reaching legal conclusions from the
use of Latin words in ancient sources. The word "bello" (war; belliger-
ency) is used to describe the conflict between two claimants to some pub-
lic authority in Rome in the turmoil following Julius Caesar's assassina-
tion and before Octavian achieved full mastery of the political system and
became Caesar Augustus. But if the Roman law of war applied, as the
word would seem to indicate, then the fundamental Roman conception of
"'war" as a legal status with legal implications would have applied in the
absence of declaration. And it would have applied against those who com-
mit "latrociniis" acts. This path of analysis leads to complications of sig-
nificant magnitude and in the light of other writings seems wholly mis-
guided. It is very likely that Livy was using the word "latrociniis"
17. DEMOSTHENES, DE HALONNESO, 2 ON POSTLIMINIUM, quoted in Greek in 2 PHILLIP-

SON, supra note 4, 375 n. 2. The words leistai and lestas are translated "pirates" also by
J.H. Vince. 1 DEMOSTHENES, ORATIONS 151-153, 156-157 (L.H. Vince trans. 1954). See also
leston at 156 translated "pirates" at 157.
18. What is addressed here are sources focusing on Roman law and Roman perceptions.
Since many educated Romans were literate in Greek, and some of the leading historians of
Rome, such as Plutarch and Polybius, were of Greek heritage, writing in Greek, a simple
distinction based on language would be misleading.
19. 2 CICERO, CONTRA VERRES II iv, 21 (L.H.G. Greenwood trans. 1953). Derivatives of
the Latin word "praedor," to make booty, to plunder, spoil, rob," are commonly translated
"pirate" or "piracy." LEWIS & SHORT, FREUND'S LATIN DICTIONARY 1417 (Andrews rev. ed.
1879).
20. 14 LivY, HISTORY OF ROME cxxviii (A.C. Schlesinger trans. 1959). The period de-
scribed is 38-37 B.C.
21. Id. at 158.
DEN. J. INT'L" L. & POL'Y VOL. 15:2,3
pejoratively and not legally, and the word "bello" to mean "struggle" or
some similar non-legal idea, rather than war. Since these distinctions are
vital to a careful legal analysis, it may be concluded that not only transla-
tions, but even original texts must be read very carefully before legal im-
plications are drawn from them.
B. The Greek and Roman Conception of "Piracy"
Thucydides' description of political life in the Aegean area rests not

only on the poetic formula of greeting, but on other passages in Homer2 2
and, no doubt, oral and perhaps lost written traditions familiar enough to
his generation that citation was not felt to be necessary by him. Modern
scholarship sees this proud description as evidence not only of a political
system accepting the organized use of force by small bands without pejo-
rative implications or any deep analysis of the political structure of the
bands themselves,2" but also of a far-reaching economic order. During the
10th and 9th centuries B.C.,24 such wars and raids reflected the struggle
for survival and economic gain by combinations of families and small
communities as part of a larger economic system in which "Forcible
seizure followed by distribution in this fashion, was one way to acquire
metal or other goods from an outside source."2 5 The seizures did not nec-
essarily involve essential supplies, and the concepts of justifiable behavior
apparently extended to permit these raids by Greeks against Greeks and
non-Greeks alike merely for gain. Given the state of politics and econom-
ics in the area, such raids were probably not the principal means of com-
merce, and it has been suggested that gift-exchanges were the main mech-
anism for economic transfers.2" The system might bear some similarity for
purposes of this study with the Viking political and economic system of
Scandinavia in the 9th to 11th centuries A.D.27
22. The most important passage repeated by several later translators and scholars to
support the assertion that "piracy" was a way of life to Homeric-Age Greeks, although the
passage does not use the word peirato or any of its derivatives in the original, is from 1
HOMER, supra note 5, ix, 39-42: Odysseus is speaking: "The wind bearing me from Ilium
made me approach the Ciconians in Ismarus; and there I laid waste the city, and destroyed
them. And taking their wives and many possessions out of the city, we divided them, that no
one might go deprived of an equal share . . ."
23. Of course, Odysseus's band was a group of warriors without fixed base who derived
their political existence from allegiance to Odysseus, the "King of Ithaka." See HOMER,
supra note 12 at 116.
24. The sack of Troy is usually placed several centuries earlier by scholars. But M.I.
Finley convincingly argues not only that the fabled sack never took place, just as the stirring
events of the epic Niebelungenlied and Beowulf could never have taken place outside of
poetic imagination, but, more importantly, that the world reflected in the Homeric poems
was the world of the historical tradition of their author(s), reflecting realities of the 10th
and 9th centuries B.C. M.I. FINLEY, THE WORLD OF ODYSSEus 48-49 (2d rev. ed. 1978).
25. Id. at 63.
26. Id. at 64. Aristotle mentions plundering as one of five general categories of political
economy: "the pastoral, the farming, the freebooting (sic), the fishing, and the life of the
chase." ARISTOTLE, THE POLITICS 1256b (E. Barker trans. 1946b) (1975 ed.).
27. J.BRONDSTED, THE VIKINGS 26-27 (1965).
The earliest time when the surviving literature in Greek uses the
word "peirato" and its derivatives to describe anybody appears to be
about 140 B.C., and it is to some specific political and economic commu-
nities of the Eastern Mediterranean littoral that the word was applied.
Polybius, whose Histories is the principal source of much of our knowl-
edge of the rise of the Roman Republic, uses the word peiraton in a pas-
sage translated by W.R. Paton in a Way avoiding the confusions wrought
by too frequent use of the English word "pirate," but creating an
equivalent confusion. He refers to: "Euripidas with two companies of Ele-
ans together with his freebooters [peiraton] and mercenaries ... 28 Just
what "freebooter" means in that context seems very unclear. But what
does seem clear is that the word "peirato" and its derivatives was being
applied not to brigands or others outside the legal order, but to small
communities including fighting men who were regarded as capable of
forming alliances and participating in wars as they were fought between
acknowledged political leaders within the legal order of the time.
Diodorus Siculus, writing about 60 B.C., uses the word in connection
with events of 304 B.C.:
[Amyntas] . . .suddenly confronted some pirates [peiratais] who had
been sent out by Demetrias ... the Rhodians took the ships with...
Timocles, the chief pirate [archipeirates].29
The usage of Livy, writing in Latin 29 B.C.-14 A.D., is similar. In
describing events of 190 B.C., he refers to Nicander, whom he calls a pi-
rate chief (archipirata),fighting with five ships as an ally of Rome3 ° In
referring to the "war" of 68-67 B.C. by which Pompey the Great cleared
the Eastern Mediterranean of Cilician commerce-raiding communities,"1
Livy not only refers to the struggle as "war" and describes it as if it were
legally indeed a "war" at Roman law, but he refers to its ending by a
negotiated surrender under which the "pirates" agreed to conform to
more settled ways:
Gnaeus Pompeius was ordered by a law passed by the popular assem-
bly to pursue the pirates, who had cut off the traffic in grain. Within
forty days he had cleared them from all the seas. He brought the war
[belloque] against them to an end in Cilicia,32 received the surrender of
the pirates and gave them land and cities.
Finally, the Greek Plutarch, writing in about 100 A.D., paints such a
clear picture of the "pirates" to which Livy referred in his brief synopsis
of the "war" of Pompey to end their control of commerce in the Eastern
Mediterranean, that it seems worth setting out in some detail. Through-
out this translation, wherever the word "pirate" is used, the word
28. 2 POLYBIuS, THE HISTORIES 461 (W.R. Paton trans. 1954).

29. 10 DIooORus SICULUS, [HISTORY] 400-401 (R.M. Greer trans. 1954).
30. 10 Livv, HISTORY OF ROME 320-321 (E.T. Sage trans. 1935).
31. See Plutarch's description of the same events, infra notes 36-39.
32. 14 Livy, HISTORY OF ROME supra note 20, at 122-123.
"peirato" or one of its derivatives is used in the original Greek,

The power of the pirates [peiratiki] had its seat in Cilicia [in Asia
Minor, where they flourished during the wars of Rome against Mithri-
dates (88-85, 83-81, 74 B.C.)] ...until they no longer attacked navi-
gators only, but also laid waste islands and maritime cities. And pres-
ently men whose wealth gave them power, and whose lineage was
illustrious, and those who laid claim to superior intelligence, began to
embark on piratical [peiratike] craft and share their enterprises, feel-
ing that the occupation brought them a certain reputation and dis-
tinction. . .Their flutes and stringed instruments and drinking bouts
along every coast, their seizures of persons in high command, and
their ransoming of captured3
cities, were a disgrace to the Roman
supremacy [hegemonias].
To complete the picture of political societies conforming to the archaic
Eastern Mediterranean pattern, Plutarch mentions the unique religious
worship of the "pirates," whose rites centered on the town of Olympus in
southern Asia Minor. 34 This combination of settled communities, religious
rites, musical tradition, and the conception of the "pirates" that what
they did was entirely proper, is what brought them into conflict with
Rome. It is hard to see how they were considered outlaws or violators of
any law other than the Roman conception of hegemony; a conception ob-
viously not shared by non-Romans at that time, 3 and possibly not by
many Romans of the pre-Augustan age that Plutarch was writing about
almost a century after the reign of Augustus. On the other hand, Plutarch
seems to have accepted the idea that such political societies, no matter
how conforming to a traditional pattern, were an anachronism beyond the
orderly system within which Rome had become accustomed to operate.
The word "peirato" and its derivatives seems to be applied to traditional
Eastern Mediterranean societies operating in ways that had been ac-
cepted as legitimate for at least a millenium. But the conception of Ro-
man order, the idea that Roman hegemony was a matter of right, of law,
had begun to make the continued existence of "pirate" communities un-
acceptable even if no justification for distinguishing those "pirate" com-
munities from their less assertive neighbors could be found directly in
Roman or general international law as it was applied between Rome and
other political communities of the Eastern Mediterranean.
33. 5 PLUTARCH, PARALLEL LIVES OF GREEKS AND ROMANS 173-175 (C.B. Perrin trans.
1917).
34. Id. at 175.
35. This Roman hegemony was achieved not by mere assertion or, indeed, by simple
conquest, but in the main by diplomacy and by treaty. See Livy, ROME AND THE MEDITERRA-
NEAN (M. Bettenson trans. 1976), for a lively English translation of the principal part of
books 31-35 of Livy's HISTORY OF ROME. The Roman hegemonial system involved military
alliances in return for which Rome guaranteed the personal position of the person invested
as the embodiment of the legal power of the client state. For a very clear and evocative
description see SALLUST, THE JUGURTHINE WAR 14 (J.C. Rolfe trans. 1931, 1960). For a lively
modern translation see SALLUST, THE JUGURTHINE WAR: CONSPIRACY OF CATALINE 47 (S.A.
Hanford trans. 1963).
The procedures for the "war against the Pirates" adopted by the Ro-
man Senate were extraordinary and reflect these legal doubts as to the
precise status of the Roman hegemony and its legal basis. A law was
passed by the Republic's Senate in 68 B.C. under which Pompey the
Great was commissioned to subdue them not as a naval commander (the
word "admiral" had not yet been invented, but the Loeb Classical Li-
brary's translator of Plutarch uses it here) but as a king deriving his sov-
ereign powers from the Roman donation, thus opposing the "pirates'"
sovereignty with Roman sovereignty and making of the piratical society
something like rebels. Plutarch makes it clear that this procedure was
shocking: Pompey was commissioned by the Roman Senate to take the
seas away from the pirates [peiraton] by giving him "not an admiralty,
but an out-and-out monarchy and irresponsible [sic: "unbridled" might
be a better translation] power over all men."36 His authority was decreed
to extend to land areas within 400 furlongs of the sea, thus to include the
entire territory of the Aegean Islands, Crete and the Dodecanese and
enough of the land of Asia Minor to include all their villages and Olym-
pus, the "pirates'" religious center.
Plutarch's description of the course of the war, and the negotiation
for peace, seems to confirm this impression, that Rome treated the "pi-
rates" not as outlaws but as enemies to be met in war and defeated. After
dispersing the "pirates' "-fleet,
Some of the pirate bands [peiratorion] that were still roving at large
begged for mercy, and since he [Pompey] treated them humanely, and
after seizing their ships and persons did them no further harm, the
rest became hopeful of mercy too, and. . . betook themselves to Pom-
pey with their wives and children, and surrendered to him. All these
he spared,and it was chiefly by their aid that he tracked down, seized,
and punished those who were still lurking in concealment because
conscious of unpardonable crimes.37
But the most numerous and powerful had bestowed their families and
treasures and useless folk in forts and strong citadels near the Taurus
mountains, while they themselves manned their ships and awaited
Pompey's attack near the promontory of Coracesium in Cilicia; here
they were defeated in a battle and then besieged. At last, however,
they . . .surrendered themselves, together with their cities [poleis
and islands of which they were in control ...The men themselves,
who were more than 20,000 in number, he [Pompey] did not once
36. PLUTARCH, supra note 34, at 177.

37. This passage looks like an illogical interpolation by a post-Augustan Greek scholar
guarding his safety under a rigid Roman imperial system more interested in justifications
than in historical accuracy. Just what these "crimes" were, and against what law other than
the Roman hegemony that did not become law until after the conquest and the evolution of
Roman conceptions of law under Augustus, is not clear. Furthermore, it appears that their
"unpardonable crimes" consisted of resistance to the Roman sovereignty, since those who
had participated in commerce-raiding but surrendered seem to have been humanely treated
as conquered enemies.
think of putting to death ...[but] determined to transfer the men

from the sea to land ...to till the ground. Some of them, therefore,
were received and incorporated into the small and half-deserted cities
of Cilicia. . . To most of them, however, he gave as a residence Dyme
in Achaea which was then bereft of men and had much good land. 8
Pompey's monarchical position under the commission issued by the
Roman Senate received something of a comeuppance shortly after, when
Metellus, another Roman general, was with rather less mercy wiping out
Cilician "pirate" villages in Crete. Since all of Crete lay within 400 fur-
longs of the sea Pompey apparently regarded this as an encroachment on
his authority and sent one of his lieutenants, Lucius Octavius, to join
with the "pirates" fighting against Metellus. Metellus won, "captured the
pirates [peiratas] and punished them, and then sent Octavius away
"" There is no further reference to Pompey's commission in this
context.
It seems clear that the word "pirate" was used by Plutarch to classify
communities with which Pompey felt it was appropriate not only to go to
war and conclude a peace treaty, but even to send military assistance to,
as to an ally, when they accepted the Senate's ordinance subjecting them
to the law of Roman "hegemony."
On the other hand, it appears that there was a change in Roman
concepts underway. To label a group "pirates" was not merely to classify
their way of life within a legal order as we still use the word "Viking" to
evoke a way of life legitimate within the harsh legal order of the middle
ages. By the time Plutarch wrote, there was an implication of impropriety
to that way of life. It had nothing to do with political motivation or crimi-
nality even under the law of Rome as applied in the Empire or allied
areas. It dealt instead with the place of an antiquated way of life in a new
commercial and political order that could not countenance interference
with trade in the Mediterranean Sea. It was not bound to "piratical" acts
on the "high seas," but to a conception of "piratical" villages forming a
society [poleisl on land which refused to accept Roman supremacy. Rela-
tions with the "pirates" were relations of war, not of policing the internal
or imperial Roman law; the results of Roman victory were the normal
results of a victorious war at that time and in that place.4
"War" to the Roman jurists was not merely a condition of fact with
people of one village or religious worship killing or enslaving people of
another village or divine descent. War was regarded as a legal status even
if no active fighting was occurring, and since victory or defeat in war had
such enormous consequences for the belligerents and their families, re-
38. PLUTARCH, supra note 33, at 181-187.

39. Id. at 189-191.
40. Those results were essentially to put the losers at the discretion of the victors; the
men were frequently killed and the women enslaved. There were no trials, no accusations or
defenses, no lawyers involved. See generally, EURIPIDES, THE TROJAN WOMEN (adapted by
J.-P. Sartre 1967).
flecting the vitality of the vivifying force given by the tribe's or commu-
nity's "God" or totemic life source to some eponymous ancestor or
founder, the ceremonies involved in the creation of that status were es-
sentially religious. The religious element of the status of war was not a
mere prayer for victory, but reflected much deeper concerns for the con-
tinuance of the race. Virgil's epic poem, Aeneid, telling the mythology
surrounding the founding of the Roman tradition in Italy by Aeneas, a
son of the defeated King Priam fleeing from the sack of Troy, is unmis-
takably, in this sense, a religious work.
The interplay between religion and the secular law between "na-
tions" or "races" or god-protected communities and tribes, is evident
from the narration of the great literary (but not always accurate) histo-
rian Livy, who grew to manhood during the days of Julius Caesar, and
wrote his history of Rome with access to sacred documents during the
early days of the reign of Augustus. He details from the oldest treaty in
the holy archives (c. 670 B.C.) the treaty-making procedures of Roman
tradition, setting out some of the formulas of words and symbolic acts,
involving a freshly plucked holy plant, the sacrifice of a pig, and metrical
ritual (which in part, alas, he fails to record as "not worth the trouble of
quoting"). Through these rituals the titulary gods on both sides (in this
case the Romans and the Albans) were called upon separately to witness
the commitment of the current holders of the life of each god's own com-
munity to the sanctity of the pledge.4 ' In this particular incident, as re-
ported by Livy, the "war" between the Romans and Albans was put into
the hands of three representatives from each side, chosen for their mar-
tial vigor and thus presumably reflecting the vigor of the holy life of each
community as well as its mere secular martial prowess. The Romans won
in a close contest, only one champion for each side surviving, and Hora-
tius for Rome ultimately killing his Alban antagonist as the two armies
stood by and watched. The two sides then buried their dead and Alba
accepted Roman rule submitting their entire treasure and lives to the
mercy of the Roman god represented by the Roman political
organization.4 2
Livy also details the ceremony followed by the Romans even into his
own time when "war" was to be begun. In Livy's version, the ceremony
for a formal declaration of war was adopted from the religious rites of the
ancient Roman tribe of the Aequicolae and taken over by priests (fetials)
representing the entire Roman community. It is worth repeating in its
entirety for an understanding of the importance of the ceremony and the
significance of Cicero's argument in Livy's own time43 that "war" against
"pirates" could be begun without it:
41. Livy, HISTORY OF ROME, supra note 20. An excellent modern translation of Books I-
V of this work is Livy, THE EARLY HISTORY OF ROME (A. de SMlincourt trans. 1971).
42. Id. at 60-61.
43. Livy's version may reflect more religious myth than political history. See also Fus-
TEL DE COULANGES, THE ANCIENT CITY 5-6 (trans. 1956).
When the envoy arrives at the frontier of the state from which satis-
faction is sought, he covers his head with a woolen cap and says: Hear
me, Jupiter! 'Hear me, land of So-and-so! Hear me, 0 righteousness! I
am the accredited spokesman of the Roman people. I come as their
envoy in the name of justice and religion, and ask credence for my
words.' The particular demands follow and the envoy, calling Jupiter
to witness, proceeds: 'If my demand for the restitution of those men
or those goods be contrary to religion and justice, then never let me be
a citizen of my country.' [Presumably so that the results of impiety
will not be visited on the entire community.] The formula, with only
minor changes, is repeated when the envoy crosses the frontier, to the
first man he subsequently meets, when he passes through the gate of
the town, and when he enters the public square. If his demand is re-
fused, after thirty-three days . . . war is declared in the following
form: 'Hear, Jupiter; hear Janus Quirinus; hear, all ye gods in heaven,
on earth, and under the earth: I call you to witness that the people of
So-and-so are unjust and refuse reparation . . .' The envoy then re-
turns to Rome for consultation. The formula in which the king asked
the opinion of the elders was approximately this: Of the goods, or
suits, or causes, concerning which the representative of the Roman
people has made demands of the representative of . . . [So-and-so],
which goods or suits or causes they have failed to restore or settle, or
satisfy . . .: 'speak, what think you?' The person thus first addressed
replied: 'I hold that those things be sought by means of just and right-
eous war. Thus I give my vote and my consent.' The same question
was put to the others in rotation, and if a majority voted in favour,
war was agreed upon. The fetial thereupon proceeded to the enemy
frontier carrying a spear with a head either of iron or hardened wood,
and in the presence of not less than three men of military age made
the following proclamation: 'Whereas the peoples of [So-and-so] . . .
have committed acts and offences against the Roman people, and
whereas the Roman people have commanded that there be war with
[them], and the Senate of the Roman people has ordained, consented,
and voted that there be war with [them]: I therefore, and the Roman
people hereby declare and make war on [them].' The formal declara-
tion made, the spear was thrown across the frontier."
These forms, ar at least their underlying concepts, were employed against
not only the South Italian peoples with whom the Romans shared a simi-
lar culture, but also against the North Italian Gauls and presumably eve-
rybody else with whom it was religiously conceived that a struggle on
earth reflected competing demands on a divine source of life symbolized
by tribal or community gods."5
The most commonly cited authority for the original Roman legal con-
ception of "piracy" adopted as the source for modern European views of
international law on the subject is Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero, an ac-
tive lawyer and politician contemporary with Julius Caesar, killed appar-
44. Livy, THE EARLY HISTORY OF ROME, supra note 20 at 69-71.

45. Id. at 381-383.
ently by order of Marc Antony in 43 B.C. in the aftermath of the murder

of Julius,"' has been cited inappropriately often,4' 7 but did in fact mention
"pirates" [pirata] in one passage that evidences the changing legal con-
ceptions of the generation that gave Pompey the legal power to subdue
them by simply asserting a superior legal power over the territory and
seas in which their outmoded culture survived. In that passage he merely
denies any legal obligation to keep an oath to "pirates" on the ground
that by being the enemies [hostes] of all communities, they are not sub-
ject to the law of the universal society that makes oaths binding between
different communities." There are many reasons for regarding this state-
ment as not indicating any considered legal opinion. Hugo Grotius him-
self, the great Dutch scholar and jurist of international law of the first
half of the 17th century, criticized this passage on the ground that the
observance of an oath is owed to God, not to the person receiving the
benefit of the oath. 4' Other factors not usually considered by those citing
this passage of Cicero as evidence that "pirates" in his day were common
criminals include the fact that the passage appears in a work on moral
duties, not law; as Cicero himself noted, the two do not always coincide.50
Moreover, bearing in mind Cicero's political situation in 44 B.C. when
this was written, and the episode in Julius Caesar's life involving the
same Cilician "pirates,"'" and the peculiar legal authority given to Cic-
ero's sometimes friend Pompey coupled with Pompey's use of that au-
thority against Metellus and the fact that Pompey was by now dead and
his twenty-five year old treaty with the "pirates" could be disregarded
without personally insulting him, and some notion of the complexity of
Cicero's thinking can be appreciated. Indeed, the "pirates" that had been
suppressed by Pompey in 67 B.C. had revived by the time Cicero was
writing this, and Marc Antony was believed to have mobilized them
against Brutus and Cassius. Cicero's condemnation of the "pirates" seems
thus less a statement of a legal opinion than a slap at his enemy,
Antony. 2
46. Cf. I CICERO, DE OFFICUs book xi, 39: "As for war, humane laws touching it are
drawn up in the fetial code of the Roman People under all the guarantees of religion, and
from this it may be gathered that no war is [legal] unless it is entered upon after an official
demand for satisfaction has been submitted or warning has been given and a formal declara-
tion made."
47. The complex politics of Rome at this period are not important to the present analy-
sis. Cicero had sided with Pompey the Great against Julius Caesar at times and with the
Senatorial party of Brutus and Cassius against the triumvirate of Marc Antony, Lepidus
and Octavian that seized power on the death of Julius. See 7 PLUTARCH, PARALLEL LIVES OF
GREEKS AND ROMANS supra note 33 at 206-207, making clear Plutarch's opinion of Antony's
responsibility for Cicero's death, and the reasons for it. See also 3 CICERO, LE'rERS TO AT-
Ticus 131, 152, 179-181 (D.R. Shackleton Bailey trans. 1968), for insight into Cicero's rela-
tions with Pompey in 50 B.C.
48. 3 CICERO, DE OFFICIIS, xi 29.
49. 2 Gso'rIus, DE JURE BELLI AC PACIs 373 (F.W. Kelsey trans. & photo. reprint 1925).
50. CICERO, supra note 48, at xii-xvi.
51. 7 PLUTARCH, supra note 33, at 441, 444.
52. CICERO, SELECTED WORKS 177, n.1 (M. Grant trans. 1960).
Perhaps the best evidence of the Roman jurists' actual conception of

"piracy" lies in the collection of undated opinions appearing in Justin-
ian's Digest of 534 A.D. 53 There appears to be in fact only one passage in
the Digest in which the word "pirata" or its derivatives appears. In the
section on the law of property dealing with the devolution of property
rights in case of a wrongful taking, the opinion of Paulus (c. 230 A.D.) is
given: "Persons who have been captured by pirates or robbers remain [le-
8' 4
gally] free."
Two other opinions have been so often cited by so many scholars as
applying to "pirates" that it seems important to set them out here, even
though by failing to use the word "pirata"or any of its derivatives they
seem to demonstrate the opposite of the lesson for which they so often
are cited. Ulpian (d. 223 A.D.) wrote:
Enemies are those against whom the Roman people have publicly de-
clared war, or who themselves have declared war against the Roman
people; others are called robbers or brigands. Therefore, anyone who
is captured by robbers, does not become their slave, nor has any need
of the right of postliminium. He, however, who has been taken by the
enemy, for instance, by the Germans or Parthians, becomes their
slave, and recovers his former condition by right of postliminium.11
And Pomponius (c. 130 A.D.):
Those are enemies who declare war against us, or against whom we
publicly declare war; others are robbers or brigands. 6
The concept of property rights needing reassessment after a legal
capture, and that in some circumstances captives would become free and
property would revert to its former owner on the conclusion of a war or
on recapture, was an important one.57 It becomes must more important
for purposes of this study later when the European-based international
law of naval prize makes it significant that the captor be classified as a
person able to change legal title or not. It was by reading the word
"capti" in the passage ascribed to Paulus, to apply to goods and not
merely to persons, and by classifying "pirates" as covered by Ulpian and
Pomponius as if they were brigands [latrones] or robbers [praedones]
that this legal conclusion was reached.
One other implication of these passages seems significant. By attach-
53. A convenient summary of dates, names and structure of the Justinian Digest and its
place in the legal literature is found in NICHOLAS, AN INTRODUCTION TO ROMAN LAW 30, 39-42
(rev. ed. 1969).
54. MOMMSEN & KRUEGER, CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS XLIX. 15.19.2 (Kunkel ed. 1954); see
also PAULUS, ON SABINUs book xvi. My translation is identical to that in J.B. Scorr, 9 THE
CIVIL LAW 184 (1932), except for the interpolation of the word "legally" to avoid the absurd
reading that captives are in fact free.
55. MOMMSEN & KRUEGER, supra note 54, at XLIX. 15.24.
56. Id. at L. 16.118.
57. It apparently dates back to Greek conceptions. See supra note 17 and accompany-
ing text.
ing the word "hostes [enemies]" to those against whom legal war [bellum]
was waged, and refusing to attach the word to police action against brig-
ands and robbers [latrones et praedones], an entirely different light is
shed on the phrase "common enemies of all mankind [hostes humani
generis] '8 as a paraphrase of its original, Ciceronian, meaning. If this
analysis is correct, and Cicero was speaking as the technical lawyer later
scholars have assumed in drawing their implications from this reference
to "pirates," then what he really seems to have meant was that "pirates"
are not robbers or brigands but legal enemies with the sole exception re-
garding promises to them that Grotius rightly criticizes as illogical and
which is incorrect as history.
It may be concluded that the fundamental Greek and Roman concep-
tion of "piracy" distinguished between robbers, who were criminals at Ro-
man law, and communities called "piratical" which were political societies
of the Eastern Mediterranean, pursuing an economic and political course
which accepted the legitimacy of seizing the goods and persons of stran-
gers without the religious and formal ceremonies the Romans felt were
legally and religiously necessary to begin a just war. Nonetheless, the Ro-
mans treated them as capable of going to "war"-indeed as in a perma-
nent state of "war" with all people except those with whom they had con-
cluded an alliance. There is some evidence that the Romans refused to
extend the technical law of postliminium to them, perhaps on the ground
that since they never ceased to be at war, there was no opportunity to
determine the title to captured goods and no need to recognize title in
those deriving rights from belligerent capture; the goods remained subject
to recapture by anybody, and the rights of postliminium would be appli-
cable against the recaptor, just as in war goods recaptured before the end
of hostilities reverted to their original owner subject only to payment of
costs attributable directly to the recapturing action. The legal rationaliza-
tion found by the Roman Senate for suppressing the communities of "pi-
rates" was not an asserted Roman right to police the seas (although Plu-
tarch seems to have thought that rationale would have been better than
the one actually used by the Senate), but the quite different assertion of a
Roman right to territorial as well as maritime jurisdiction in the Eastern
Mediterranean. To examine the full implications of this popular Roman
view on the course of Roman, and, indeed, world history, is far beyond
the limits of this study. For present purposes it seems enough to point
out that "piracy" to the Romans was a descriptive noun for the practices
of a particular landbased Eastern Mediterranean people whose views of
law and intercommunity relations appear to have reflected a millenium-
long tradition that had become an obstacle to Roman trade and inconsis-
tent with Roman views of the world order under Roman hegemony. The
58. The phrase appears to have gained currency as a shortening of the passage from
CICERO, supra note 48. The source of the paraphrase hostes humani generis has not been
found. Blackstone attributed it to Sir Edward Coke. 4 BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE
LAWS OF ENGLAND 71 (Amer. ed. 1790).
word did not imply criminality under any legal system, Roman or law of
nations. It was applied to a fully organized society with families and a
particular religious order that seems to have been not shockingly different
from the social organization and religious orders of many other peoples of
that time and place.
It is not beyond conjecture that something of this pattern was in the
mind of Sir T.S. Raffles when he called "piratical" some of the Malay
Sultanates with which he had to deal in 1811. 59
None of this is meant to imply that non-polis-connected marauding
at sea, what today might (or might not) be called "piracy" as a result of
later legal developments, was permissible at Roman internal law, Roman
imperial law relating to hegemonial rights, if any, or international law as
perceived by Roman statesmen. But those acts were called something
else, and to analyze the full range of legal results that flowed from using
those other labels would involve a discussion beyond the limits of this
study. To Europeans of later times whose education included familiarity
with Greek and Latin writings in which the words "peirato" and "pirata"
or their derivatives were used, some hint of the earlier meaning remained
despite later legal uses of the word in forms contemporary with the later
Europeans in special legal contexts. And that classical meaning did not
carry the implication of criminality or violation of general international
law that other meanings carried; it justified a kind of political action, per-
haps, and also perhaps had some legal implication in general interna-
tional law particularly as it related to the laws of war and postliminium.
But these are factors better discussed later on.
C. The Reorganizationof the Renaissance

1. "Piracy"Enters Vernacular English as "Privateering"
For a thousand years after Justinian the word "pirate" appears to

have remained buried in the Greek and Latin texts familiar to learned
monks but not considered significant to soldiers and statesmen. Norse
raiders of the 9th to l1th centuries A.D. following a career that seems in
many ways analogous to that of the "pirates" of the time of Cicero and
Pompey were not usually called "pirates" in English or Latin in contem-
porary documents, but were called by the names they gave themselves,
"Danes" or "Vikings." Ranulf Higdon (or Higden) wrote a general history
of the world in Latin in the first half of the 14th century, referred to by a
Greek abbreviation for its long title as the Polychronicon, that received
some popularity for a century or so after its first production in manu-
script. In it he drew the obvious analogy, calling the Vikings "Dani
piratae."John de Trevisa, a don at Oxford 1362-1379, translated Higdon
into his native Middle English, translating the word "piratae" as "see
theves [sea thieves]." The earliest use of the word "pirate" in English
59. See RAFFLES, supra note 2.

found by the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary is in the second

quarter of the 15th century.60 That early usage seems to have had no legal
connotation.
Meantime, in the Mediterranean Sea area, the old Greek and Roman
usages seem to have survived. Merchant ships that passed near enough to
fishing or small agricultural villages of the Mediterranean to be safely at-
tacked by the inhabitants of those communities were, from time to time,
attacked. The dangers of trade and travel during the rise of Venice, the
Crusades, the establishment of the Ottoman Empire and the dominance
of Suleiman the Magnificant in 16th century Turkey and the Eastern
Mediterranean generally, and the establishment of stable Muslim rule in
the southern Mediterranean towns of Algiers, Salee, Tripoli and Tunis
did not evoke images of "piracy" as a violation of any law.
Later writers have used the word "piracy," with its modern legal and
romantic connotations, in wholly misleading ways. As with later refer-
ences to "piracy" attributed to classical authors, the most eminent mod-
ern writers have used the word to refer to a host of activities in the Medi-
terranean of the 16th and 17th centuries that may or may not have been
considered "piracy," or even wrongful under any legal system. The situa-
tion is summed up admirably by Fernand Braudel, a French historian
who himself uses the word "piraterie" in the most confusingly vague and
unhistorical ways:
In the 16th century [as in Homeric times] the sea was filled with pi-
rates, and pirates perhaps even more cruel than those of earlier days.
Raiding [1a course] takes a mask, disguises itself as semi-official war-
fare, with letters of marque ...
I have repeatedly said that piracy was the child of the Mediterranean.
True enough, but historians have often lost sight of the generality of
the practice while focusing their attention and reproofs only on the
Barbary corsairs. Their fate, which was grand, overshadows the rest.
Everything else is deformed. That which is called "piracy" when done
by the Barbary corsairs is called heroic, pure crusading spirit when
done by the Knights of Malta, and the equally ferocious Knights of
St. Stephen, based at Pisa under the protection of Cosimo dei
Medici. "'
60. The earliest usages recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary are: . . . 1387
Trevisa, Higden (Rolls) VI, 415 see Theves of Danes (L. Dani piratae); 1426 Lydg. De Guil.
Pilgr. 23963, I mene pyratys of the Se, which brynge folk in pouerte. 1430-40 Bochas 1.xii 38
(1544) This word pirate of Pirrhus toke the name. 1522 J. CLERK in ELLIS ORIG. LETTI. SER
111.1.312, Pirats, Mores and other Infidels . . . OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, at 901. Higden
(or Higdon) and the Polychronicon are explained in 13 ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA 454 (11th
ed. 1910).
61. BRAUDEL, LE MEDITERRANEE ET LE MONDE MEDITERRANEEN A L'EPOQUE DE PHILIPPE
II 694 (1949). Because of the importance of the specific words, I have translated the French
original myself despite the existence of a fine English translation by Sian Reynolds of the
1966 second (revised) edition of Braudel's masterpiece. BRAUDEL, THE MEDITERRANEAN AND
THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE AGE OF PHILIP II (S. Reynolds trans. 1973).
Thus, while the picture painted by Braude 2 is brilliantly clear and imag-
inative, the fact that he uses the word "pirate" to include licensed war-
fare at sea should not be forgotten. He describes the Mediterranean of
the 16th century as featuring: "Sea-pirates . . . aided and abetted by
powerful towns and cities. Pirates on land, bandits, received regular back-
ing from nobles." ' But the picture is actually, legally, one of lively and
dangerous commerce and conflicting claims to authority that might be
called an authority to tax nearby shipping lanes with capture of the ves-
sel, confiscation of its cargo, and the enslavement of the crew the penalty
for tax evasion. Another legal basis for "piracy" as the word is used by
Braudel was the medieval law of war: "One of the most profitable ven-
tures of Christian pirates in the Levant became the search of Venetian,
Ragusan or Marseillais vessels for Jewish merchandise, . . . likening it to
contraband, a convenient pretext for the arbitrary confiscation of
goods."6 4 The "Christian pirates" referred to here seem to have been the
Knights of Malta, a crusading Order asserting sovereign rights to govern
land and to participate in lawful war."'
For theft to be profitable, "stolen" goods must have a market. Where
the market is in the control of a "government," a person or body to whom
is conceded the legal power to change title to property, and a "taking" is
authorized by the proprietor of that market, it is difficult to conceive of
"stealing" as distinct from "lawful capture" or "taxation." By the end of
the sixteenth century such markets were flourishing in Valetta (Malta),
Leghorn (Livorno, Italy) and Algiers. Their legal basis was thus the law of
the Christian Knights of Malta, Cosimo de' Medici, and the Muslim Gov-
ernor (under Turkish control) of Algiers."6
For the pattern of commerce to be profitable the goods must con-
tinue to flow; the taxation or belligerent interdiction (or robbery) must
not be so burdensome as to drive trade away; even risk-sharing through
insurance must be managed in such a way that the risk does not become
so great as to be uninsurable."7 Examining this economic reality and the
undeniable vitality of Mediterranean trade in the period 1580-1648, when
captures at sea were most vigorously condemned by European writers as
intolerable, even if legal, it can be conjectured that the forcible exchange
of goods and slave-taking was in fact a tolerable part of the economic
system of the Mediterranean at that period. Indeed, even a century later,
62. Id. For convenience, citations to Braudel below will be used to refer to his work as
translated by Reynolds, and the Reynolds translation will be quoted without closer analysis
of its use of the word "pirate" or its derivatives.
6:3. Id. at 749.
64. Id. at 728.
65. Id. at 822. "As early as 1552 and again in 1565, Jewish protests had singled out for
complaint the ships of the 'most evil monks' of Malta, that 'trap and net which catches
booty stolen at the expense of Jews'" citing J. HACOHEN, EMEK HABKHA, LA VALLEE DES
PLEURS 172 (1881). See id. at 822, n.371.
66. Id. at 870.
67. Id. at 883-884.
the risk of being taken as a slave in the waters near Algiers and Morocco
was significant, and the fate of the slave once taken was not always as
grim as might be assumed by a 20th century reader.68
England was already a major sea power by the time the Spanish Ar-
mada was defeated in 1588, soon to dominate large areas of the sea and
express through the application of force its sentiments as to the proper
order of commerce and private property.
John Chamberlain, whose letters written 1597 to 1626 constitute a
major source of insight into the trade and politics of that period in Eng-
land, apparently used the word "piracies" as a synonym for "privateering
under license" in a letter to Dudley Carleton dated 31 January 1599:
"Upon the Duke of Florence's embargo and complaint of our piracies,
here is order upon pain of death that no prizes be taken in the Levant
seas." A similar usage appears thirteen years later when Chamberlain
refers to unlicensed takings as a matter of state authority bearing no ap-
parent relationship to abstract notions of morality or international law:
"Many of our pirates are come home upon their pardon for life and
goods, but the greater part stand still aloof in Ireland, because they are
not offered the same conditions, but only life . .. "o The same usage was
applied to Algiers and Tunis, whose licensed or unlicensed prize-takers
were called "pirates" while routine treaty negotiations were conducted
with the rulers of those places.
Sir Thomas Roe had taken great pains and thought he had done a
chef d'oeuvre in concluding a truce or peace for our merchants with
the pirates of Algiers and Tunis. But he is in danger to be disavowed
and all this labor lost (howsoever it comes about) and we left to the
mercy of those miscreants who have already seven or eight hundred of
our able mariners, among whom many gunners and men of best ser-
vice at sea, who by this treaty should have been delivered."
About the beginning of the 17th century "pirates" began to take the
place of "Spaniards" as the villains in English popular ballads. A ballad
published in 1609 condemning John Ward and a Dutchman named Simon
Danseker for their villainies under Barbary license illustrates the chang-
ing mood:
Gallants, you must understand,
Captain Ward of England,
A pyrate and a rover on the sea,
Of late a simple fisherman
68. Cf. D. DEFOE, ROBINSON CRUSOE ch. 1 (1719). Defoe is also supposed to be the au-
thor of A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE PIRATES (1718) under the pseudonym of Capt. Charles
Johnson.
69. CHAMBERLAIN, THE CHAMBERLAIN LETTERS: A SELECTION 12 (E.M. Thomson ed.
1966) (letter no. 16 to his friend Dudley Carleton in the standard collection edited by N.E.
McClure).
70. Id. at 124 (letter no. 132 to Carleton dated 29 January 1612).
71. Id. at 226 (letter no. 434 to Carleton dated 12 July 1623).
In the merry town of Feversham,

Grows famous in the world now every day.
Men of his own country

He still abuses vilely;
Some back to back are cast into the waves;
Some are hewn in pieces small,
Some are shot against a wall;
A slender number of their lives he saves.
At Tunis in Barbary
Now he buildeth stately
A gallant palace and a royal place,
Decked with delights most trim,
Fitter for a prince than him,
To which at last will prove to his disgrace.
There is not any Kingdom,

In Turkey or in Christendom
But by these pyrates [Ward and Danseker]
have received loss;
Merchant-men of every land
Do daily in great danger stand,
And fear do much the ocean main to cross
But their cursed villanies,

And their bloody pyracies,
Are chiefly bent against our Christian friends;
Some Christians so delight in evils
That they become the sons of divels,
And for the same have many shameful ends.
London's Elizabeth
Of late these rovers taken hath,
A ship well laden with rich merchandize;
The nimble Pearl and Charity,
All ships of gallant bravery,
Are by these pyrates made a lawful prize.
The ballad ends with three more verses describing a quarrel between
Ward and Danseker, and seeing in their separation, Ward to stay near
Tunis and Danseker to hover near "Argier" (Algiers), the hand of God
72
which will lead to their overthrow.
The realities reflected on this ballad led to a diplomatic expedition to
Algiers in 1621 under Sir Robert Mansell, which failed,7 3 and an unsuc-
72. 33 NAVAL SONGS AND BALLADS, 25-29 (1907).

73. CHAMBERLAIN, supra note 69 at 281 (letter no. 374 to Carleton dated 10 March
1621): "We hear that Sir Robert Mansell and his fleet have done just nothing, but negoti-
ated with those of Algiers for certain slaves."
cessful attempt by Parliament to ransom 1500 Christian captives in 1624.

Popular indignation over the plight of the captives is reflected in a
frankly polemical ballad of that year:
Not many moones have from their silver bowes
Shot light through all the world, since those sworne foes
To God and all good men . . . [sic] that hell-borne crew
Of pirates (to whome there's no villanies new),
Those halfe-Turkes and halfe Christians, who now ride
Like sea-gods (on rough billows in their pride),
Those renegadoes, who (their Christ denying)
Are worse than Turkes . . ."
In 1637, 3-400 souls were taken from Salee by the English ship
75
Rainborow, apparently peacefully.
The English conception of when the word "pirate" was appropriate
in international relations at this period had not come to be stably re-
flected in a specific legal context. As is apparent from the last quoted line
of the ballad of Ward and Danseker, at least in the popular mind there
was no distinction between privateering and "piracy;" a "pyrate" could
make "lawful prize" of a captured vessel. It is possible, although not en-
tirely clear, that the word was a pejorative use for privateers of any na-
tionality who captured English vessels. The word appears to have slipped
so quickly into the general pejorative vocabulary that whatever legal pre-
cision it might have derived from classical sources eroded by the late 16th
century.
Some clues as to the evolving meaning of the word, and some insight
into the pattern of governance and trade that gave rise to the changes in
meaning, are implicit in contemporary documents relating to the East In-
dia Company's business in Southeast Asia. There are mentions, for exam-
ple, of English and Dutch ships in 1622, during one of the very brief peri-
ods of cooperation between the merchants of the two nations, keeping
company "for fear of pirates" near Java, but it is unclear precisely who or
where the "pirates" were. 76 Similarly there is mention in December 1623
in a communication from the Council at Batavia to the English
merchants at Jambi (in Sumatra) that it is deemed "dangerous to send
one ship for England alone, because of the abundance of pirates lurking
in all places,"" and a few days later the same Council referred to the
need for homeward-bound ships to be prepared "against the invasion of
74. 33 NAVAL SONGS AND BALLADS, supra note 72, at 31-32. "The lamentable cries of at
least 1500 Christians: Most of them being Englishmen
75. Id.
76. CALENDAR OF STATE PAPERS, COLONIAL SERIES, EAST INDIES, CHINA AND JAPAN 1622-
1624 No. 143, at 64 (Sainsbury ed. 1878, 1964). This is in a report dated 27 August 1622
from the British East India Company's Council in Batavia (Richard Fursland (President),
Thomas Brockedon and Augustine Spaldinge) to the Company in London.
77. Id. No. 367 at 196. Fursland had died and was replaced on the Council by Henrie
Hawley and John Goninge; Thomas Brockedon apparently acted as President.
that cursed crew of pirates.""8 Again, it is unclear precisely who or where

the "pirates" were, but they were probably not the Dutch; there is a ref-
erence in instructions given to an English trading voyage to Bantam (in
Java) by the "President and Council of Defence" in Batavia on 16 August
1623 to the need to defend against an assault by the Dutch "as from pi-
rates," 9 apparently distinguishing between the two threats.
King James I, convinced that the East India Company was withhold-
ing from the Admiralty its tenth share of prize money taken under license
by the Company as "reprizals" (apparently against Portugal), is reported
to have called the Company itself "pirates.""0 In the Court Minutes of the
East India Company the same transaction is explained:
• . . Mr. Governor replied that upon receipt of the release promised
for the time past and the warrant and direction for the future they
were ready to pay the money. His Majesty's answer was that this was
to give them leave to be pirates; the answer was that the Company
delighted neither in blood nor rapine, and therefore humbly besought
his Majesty would be a means that peace might be between the En-
glish and Portugals . . . or else that his Majesty would explain in
what cases the English might defend themselves by offending others if
there were cause. 8'
It seems likely that two different conceptions of "piracy" were involved,
one asserted by the Company referred to "blood" and "rapine" and seems
to relate to English criminal law as it might be applied generically to rob-
bery within the jurisdiction of the Admiral; the other implied by King
James I related to any unlicensed taking. It is tempting in this to see a
Stuart King seeking a legal basis for classifying as criminals those who
merely failed to submit to total centralized control over their activities,
and a private Company seeking to restrict royal control to what was per-
mitted by Parliament in its criminal statutes. But, as shall be seen below,
the dispute probably reflects differing conceptions of law on a much
deeper level.
It does seem to be concluded by all who have examined the facts of
Mediterranean commerce in the 16th and 17th centuries that licensed
"privateering" of many European powers, including England, made trade
not only in the Mediterranean but also in the North Atlantic and else-
where, hazardous for all traders of any nationality, and that the four Bar-
bary communities of Tunis, Morocco, Algiers and Salee joined in this
practice in the early 17th century. 2 The word "piracy" was used increas-
ingly around the turn of the 17th century to refer to privateering, possi-
78. Id. No. 368 at 202 (Dec. 14, 1623); report to the Company in London.
79. Id. No. 565 at 365, signed by Brockedon, Hawley and Goninge.
80. Id. No. 303 at 125 (June 23, 1629); Minutes of meetings concluding June 23, 1624.
Eventually, the Company paid two-tenths to the King in order to obtain the release of their
vessels from arrest by the Admiral.
81. Id. No. 481 at 294 (June 23-25, 1624).
82. See BRAUDEL, supra note 61; see generally FISHER, BARBARY LEGEND 137-145 (1957).
bly by analogy to the classical "pirates" of Cilicia in the Eastern Mediter-

ranean, but the word was assuming a more specific meaning related to
unlicensed "privateering" as the century progressed.
2. "Piracy" Enters the Legal Vocabulary as "Outlawry"
The professional international law scholars of the 16th and 17th cen-
tury left in their writings evidence of this evolution of meaning, and how
the word "piracy" acquired technical international legal meanings reflect-
ing the popular culture.
The North Italian Pierino Belli, publishing his major work on mili-
tary subjects and war in 1563 rests on the medieval post-glossater Baldus
Ubaldus (1327-1400) as authority for interpreting Cicero's and Plutarch's
writings to mean that while war should not be begun without a declara-
tion, "it is customary to make an exception in the case of pirates
[piratae], since they are both technically and in fact already at war; for
people whose hand is against every man should expect a like return from
all men, and it should be permissible for any one to attack them."8 He
distinguishes "pirates," towards whom the laws of war apply, from per-
sons whom the Pope or Holy Roman Emperor has branded as public ene-
mies; public enemies, but not "pirates," are termed "outlaws" whom even
persons without soldiers' licenses may kill.84 But Belli makes a major de-
parture from precedent when repeating Cicero's condemnation of Marc
Antony's agreement with the Cilician "pirates" in 44 B.C. 5 as if applica-
ble in all contexts and disregarding any evidence that treaties with the
Cilician "pirates" had in fact been concluded and observed by Pompey as
well as by Marc Antony. Indeed, the inconsistency between the two
passages in Belli, one affirming the applicability of the law of war to rela-
tions with "pirates" and the other asserting a rule of law that would make
the termination of that war impossible except by the complete annihila-
tion of the "pirates," seems to reflect some confusion of thought.
Balthasar de Ayala, a native of Antwerp (now part of Belgium, then
part of the provinces of the Habsburg monarchy ruled from Spain) writ-
ing in 1581 carried the confusion a step further. By reading the passages
of Justinian's Digest relating to captivity and postliminium as if all refer-
ences to "brigands" ("latrones") applied equally to "pirates," he actually
denied the status of lawful enemy ("hostes") to pirates in apparent disre-
gard of all the ancient writings:
For the same reason, the laws of war and of captivity and of postlim-
iny, which apply to enemies, do not apply to rebels, any more than
they apply to pirates [piratis] and robbers (these not being included
83. BELLI, DE RE MILITARI ET BELLO TRACTATUS pt. II, ch.11 (H.S. Nutting trans. 1563
ed. & photo. reprint 1936).
84. Id. at 83.
85. Id. at 88, pt. II, ch.14. Belli quotes verbatim CICERO supra note 46. See also supra
note 49.
in the term "enemy"). Our meaning is that these persons themselves

can not proceed under the laws of war and so, e.g., they do not acquire
the ownership of what they capture, this only being admitted in the
case of enemies; but all the modes of stress known to the laws of war
may be employed against them, even more than in the case of ene-
mies, for the rebel and the robber merit severer reprobation than an
enemy who is carrying on a regular and just war and their condition
ought not to be better than his.86
Nor is it clear why he denied the status of lawful enemy to rebels,

although legally the case for criminality was easier to make regarding
"rebels" than "pirates" in 1581, since rebellion was obviously a violation
of the law of the monarch against whom it was aimed, and was committed
by people within the "allegiance," of that monarch, while "pirates" were
beyond the reach of municipal law under normal feudal concepts. The
possibility that rebels might achieve an independent status under inter-
national law before the former monarch accepts that negation of his mon-
archy's internal law, and thus become best viewed as entitled to the pro-
tection international law gives to lawful belligerents even if their precise
status is doubtful, was not considered by Ayala. Perhaps his views were
influenced by loyalty to the Habsburg monarchy during the violent days
7
of the rise of the Dutch Republic.
3. The Legal Order and Outlawry

a. Positivist Theory: Law as a Support for Policy
The first writer of lasting eminence to convert the confusions of the

time to legal principle, to argue that the label "pirate" carries with it
unmistakably the meaning of outlawry and that what "pirates" do is for-
bidden by international law, was Alberico Gentili. Born in Italy in 1552,
but forced by the Inquisition to leave when his father, and apparently he
himself, converted to the Protestant religion in the 1570s, Gentili settled
in England in 1580 and was appointed to a teaching post at the Univer-
sity of Oxford in 1581. He was made Regius Professor of Civil Law there
in 1587 and published the first volume of his Commentaries on the Law
of War in 1588. Two other volumes followed in 1589, and all three were
reissued together in 1598. He appeared with Royal permission as the ad-
vocate for Spain in several cases before the Royal Council Chamber in
London, dying in 1608 full of honors.8 8
86. AYALA, DE JURE ET OFFicus BELLICIS ET DISCIPLINA MILITARI ch. II, para. 15 (J.P.
Bate trans. 1912).
87. See J.L. MOTLEY, THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC (1856); J.L. MOTLEY, THE
UNITED NETHERLANDS (1860). Ayala's father was a Spaniard, married to a Belgian and resi-
dent in Antwerp for some 16 years before the birth of Balthasar in 1548. The Ayala family
was very well connected with the Habsburg monarchy. The Act of Abjuration was passed by
the States General of the Netherlands in 1581. Until 1648, Spain denied the legal labels
resulting from the ability of the Netherlands to maintain its independence militarily.
88. 2 GENTILI, DE JURE BELLI LIBRi TRES (Text of 1612) 12a-14a (J.C. Rolfe trans.
1987 THE LAW OF PIRACY 197
After defining the legal state of war ("Bellum est") as a "just [legal?]
and public contest of arms [publicorum armorum iusta contentio]," 9 and
asserting on the basis of quotations from Justinian's Digest that only
Princes have the legal power to resort to war,9" Gentili devotes an entire
chapter to demonstrating by legal logic that "pirates" cannot be public
enemies; cannot wage "war." 9' "A state of war cannot exist with pirates
and robbers, in the opinion of Pomponius and Ulpian [cum piratis & la-
trunculis bellum non est. vt ita Pomponius, & Ulpianus definierunt].' '92
He goes on: "Pirates are the common enemies of all mankind [hostes sunt
communes], and therefore Cicero says that the laws of war cannot apply
to them."93 But the passage Gentili immediately quotes from Cicero does
not mention "pirata"or any of its derivatives or the law of war; it is a
9' 4
passage relating only to promises given to "praedones."
It is, of course, possible to quote the entire chapter, but it is not the
function of this study to subject to critical analysis the influential scholar-
ship of others except as necessary to trace the evolution and legal mean-
ing of the concept of "piracy" in modern international law. Thus, without
further examples, it is possible to conclude that Gentili in 1588 took an
argumentative position, supported with an advocate's brief, that "piracy"
was not a matter of permanent war with communities pursuing violent
tax collections at sea or basing part of their economy on booty seized
from their neighbors. "Piracy" to Gentili was apparently any taking of
foreign life or property not authorized by a sovereign, synonymous with
brigandage or robbery on land, i.e., his conception of the criminal law
implications of the words praedones and latrones or latrunculi in Roman
law, which he does not analyze, applied equally to "piracy" without
analysis.
It seems clear that the license of an established sovereign was the key
to his thinking. The chapter concludes with a famous example illustrating
precisely that:
But what are we to think about those Frenchmen who were captured
by the Spaniards in the last war with Portugal and were not treated as
lawful enemies: They were treated as pirates [piratae], since they
served Antonio, who had been driven from the whole kingdom and
never recognizd as king by the Spaniards. But history itself proves
that they were not pirates [piratas] and I say this because of no argu-
ment derived from the number and quality of the men and ships, but
from the letters of their king which they exhibited; and it was that
1933).
89. Id. Bk. I, ch.ii.
90. Id. at 22.
91. Id. at ch.IV.
92. Id. Rolfe's translation seems imprecise; Gentili did not say that Pomponius and
Ulpian actually came to that conclusion, but that the legal conclusion flowed from their
definition.
93. Id.
94. Id.
king whom they served, not Antonio, although this was especially for
the interest of Antonio: a consideration, however, which did not affect
their status."
The implications of Gentili's position were great. If it were generally

accepted, whatever the weaknesses of the appeal to classical writings in
support of it, that all takings were in some sense "criminal" unless au-
thorized by a person whose legal power to issue such an authorization
were acknowledged, no degree of political organization or goal could make
a "rebel" into a lawful combatant or require the application of the laws of
war to the struggle against the rebel army. A tool of enormous power was
placed in the hands of "sovereigns." The political struggle to unify France
and to engorge the Royal power of the Stuart kings of England would be
helped. Moreover, each "sovereign" would seem to be accorded the legal
power, by "recognizing" anybody's legal status needed to license pri-
vateers or naval commanders (or withholding that "recognition"), to de-
termine what legal regime would be applied to any struggle between the
"sovereign" and an enemy of uncertain status. The Barbary states could
be rendered "piratical" by simply withholding recognition of his govern-
mental position from a new Dey or "recognizing" a rival, thus depriving
the one not liked of the power to issue the Turkish equivalent of letters of
marque and reprisal. Gentili's approach was clearly attractive to him as
an advocate for Spain in England 1605-1608. s6
Many of the cases in which Gentili was concerned involved "postlim-
iny" in its renaissance form, the determination of title to goods and sta-
tus of persons taken by a foreign sovereign, his agent, or a "privateer" (or
"pirate") possibly acting in excess of his foreign license. While it is not
necessary for purposes of this study to set out the complexities of the
Roman law of postliminium, a few words as to its growing importance in
renaissance Europe seem needed.
b. Some Technicalities: Property Law and Privateering
"Postliminium" was the Roman law word of art to denote that

branch of the law which dealt with rights of property during wartime.
Questions involved primarily the status of persons (slave or free) cap-
tured in war and brought to the territory of a neutral before the war
ended; would it be unneutral of the third country to deny the property
right of the captor in his slave? If so, could the captor sell the slave and
pass title to a neutral? And if that neutral sold the slave to a buyer from
his original country, what then; would the captive soldier become a slave
in his own country? The analogy to captured goods and vessels seems
clear.
95. Id.
96. See GENTILI, supra note 88. A collection of Gentili's briefs before the English Royal
Chamber was published posthumously in 1613. See GENTILI, HISPANICIs ADVOCATIONIS 1613,
1661 (F.F. Abbot trans. 1661 & photo. reprint 1912).
By late medieval times, the legal status of war, retaining some of its
religious background, no longer applied to many lawful private takings. It
was, in fact, in an effort to avoid bringing about a state of war between
princes that letters of marque and reprisal were issued to private persons
authorizing them to recapture from foreigners goods that had been
wrongfully taken by those foreigners. There were no judicial proceedings
prior to the issuance of the letters, thus there could be, and presumably
were, serious questions about the "wrongfulness" of the original taking
and the propriety of the supposed "recapture." Moreover, it was rarely
possible to assure that the goods "recaptured" were identical with the
goods originally taken, and it was but a small step to issue letters of mar-
que and reprisal ("licentiamarcandi" in 1295) for the taking not necessa-
rily of the original goods, but of any goods up to the value of the original
goods; and not necessarily from the original taker, but from his fellow-
citizen.9 7
Little help in determining the precise meaning and origin of the sys-
tem exists in etymology. "Reprisal" comes from Latin via French and
means "re-taking." It is possible to speculate that the original sense in
law involved simply an authority to recapture goods wrongfully taken by
another. "Marque" seems to have an obscure origin and some relationship
to the technical old Provengal law of pledge. It has no English usage other
than in "Letters of Marque" and almost always the words "marque and
reprisal" appear together. On the other hand, as noted above, the phrase
"licentia marcandi," clearly meaning a letter authorizing a taking in the
sense of "letters of marque and reprisal," appears in a document of 1295,
and the phrase "Marquandi sue gagiandi" in an English legal document
of 1293, predating by some sixty years the earliest reference to "la lei de
Mark & de represaills" found by the compilers of the Oxford English
Dictionary in an English statute of 1354. The word "marquandi" seems
to relate not to seizures and pledges but to merchantability; the legal
power to pass title to goods."'
These shifts in the system of private "reprisal" and equivalent cap-
ture for sale to satisfy the original claim in money terms by the end of the
16th century had failed of their purpose to avoid war between the sover-
eigns over private claims. The issuance of such letters had begun to be
regarded in Northern Europe as necessarily involving the centralizing
monarchies in the attack on foreigners whom it was the legal duty of their
97. See 1 MARSDEN, DOCUMENTS RELATING TO LAW AND CUSTOM OF SEA at 38, Vol. 49
(N.R.S. 1915). See, e.g., letter of 1295 (23 Edw. I) authorizing an English captain to make
capture up to the value of the goods spoiled by "the men and subjects of the realm of
Portugal."
98. THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 179 defines "marque" as meaning merely "repri-
sal" and traces it back to medieval Latin "marcare," "to seize as a pledge." THE AMERICAN
HERITAGE DICTIONARY 751, 1529, traces the word back to the Indo-Germanic root "merg-":
"boundary," "border" via Old Provencal "marcar," "to seize." The phrase marquandi sue
gagiandi ("marque and pledge"?) appears in a document of 1293 cancelling a similar license
that had apparently been issued earlier. I MARSDEN, supra note 97 at 19, 38-39.
own sovereigns to protect. Thus, the issuance of letters of marque and

reprisal was becoming itself a belligerent act, justifiable only by the law of
war. The old forms persisted, and it was apparently felt not necessary
that the war be declared before the letters were issued, while it was felt to
be necessary to apply the laws of war to determine the lawfulness of the
capture. Thus, the license, the letters, held by the captor were felt to be
subject to examination and the legal status of the foreign "sovereign" is-
suing an equivalent license could be called into question. The question
would arise whenever goods or a ship purchased in Algiers or Tunis ar-
rived in England or Holland, for example, and some former owner identi-
fied it as his. This was often done in the case of a ship; Admiralty pro-
ceedings to determine rights in a vessel became the typical forum for
hearing questions of this sort. Thus, while "prize courts" in any country"
might deal with wartime captures, and the Royal Council Chamber in
England dealt with various claims involving the dignity of the Crown in
the early 17th century, ordinary Admiralty courts in England dealt with a
variety of cases arising out of peacetime capture under letters of marque
and reprisal.
The proceedings in Admiralty, Royal Chamber and Prize were pro-
ceedings before national courts; i.e., only the sovereign could authorize an
adjudication of property rights within his domain, so all the courts there,
whatever their title or form, derived from him their authority to adjudi-
cate title to property. But the substantive law they applied was necessa-
rily a law that had to be acceptable both at home and, if the new title
were to be of any use to the winner of the case, abroad. Thus rationales
or, probably more accurately, justifications based on legal logic and prece-
dent for the determinations of the tribunal, had to be found in terms that
would seem persuasive to the tribunals erected by foreign sovereigns deal-
ing with the same or similar cases. This pattern of logic and the appeal to
precedent based on incidents not tied to local circumstances and legisla-
tion might be best described as the application of "international law" to
the case, or of a special branch of municipal law, or even as a sort of
conflict of laws situation where the municipal law refers the tribunal to a
foreign system of laws (in this case "international law") which in turn
refers the questions of title to a foreign law (perhaps the law of Tunis in
the case of a Tunisian capture followed by legal proceedings equivalent to
Prize or Admiralty or Royal Chamber proceedings in Tunis). Which set of
concepts was used would depend on the complexity of the mind of the
analyst and the consistency of the particular legal model with other legal
principles important to the tribunal.
Gentili, as the Advocate of Spanish interests in England at the high-
est legal levels, apparently phrased his pleadings, when he could, as
pleadings on behalf of English merchants deriving title through Spanish
99. The practice of holding prize courts only in the territory of the capturing country as
an aspect of belligerency does not seem to have become clearly established until somewhat
later. 2 MARSDEN, supra note 97, at xii, vol. 50.
claimants, and seems frequently to have omitted the Spanish middle step.
Thus, where he argued on behalf of English merchants against other
English merchants, he was actually doing his proper job of representing
Spanish interests. Where he could, he also described the interests of the
other side as foreign, even where it seems likely that they were as deeply
(or as shallowly) rooted in England as his own side's were.
In the first cases in his book of pleadings, Gentili argued that the
Roman writers and precedents created a law of "postliminy" that should
be applied in the Royal Chamber to permit lawful title to pass to a captor
only as a result of lawful capture during time of war, and then only after
the capture is perfected by the captive people, goods or vessel being
brought to the territory controlled by the capturing person's sovereign
and the capture declared good there. He noted as if merely in passing,
that "To Pirates and wild beasts no territory offers safety [Piratis,& feris
territorium nullum praebet securitatem]" because "Pirates are the ene-
mies of all men [Piratae sunt hostes omnium]' '10 0 and cannot perfect
their captures any more than wild beasts can. In a case involving a
purchase by English merchants directly from "pirates" in a market under
the supervision of the treasury officials of the "King of Barbary," Gentili
argued that the Roman law forbidding pirates to alter title (he did not
distinguish between title to persons and title to goods) applied in Barbary
as it applied in Turkey, the territorial descendant of the Eastern Roman
Empire of which Justinian was Emperor. That law, he argued, nullified
the purported legal effects of the English purchase even though there was
some official Barbary connection with the sale. As an additional reason in
policy for adopting the legal pattern he proposed, he argued that a con-
trary result would give to "pirates" a "very convenient place, which is
quite close to the Spanish lines of trade and occupied by English
merchants, where they may distribute their booty among their confeder-
ates. Does this make for trade?"''
On the other side, when attempting to support title derived by
purchase in Tunis from "pirates" against the Venetian original owners, he
argued that there are exceptions to the absolute rules. Under one such
exception at Roman law the payer of a ransom to "pirates" could hold the
persons ransomed until repaid the amount of the ransom; rights of pos-
session might thus be passed by "pirates" even if full rights of property
could not.' s It is not clear just who the "pirates" were (they were as-
serted to be English) or what they did or if they had any letters from a
foreign prince. Since they were not parties to the case, and Gentili's argu-
ment did not rest on asserting the legitimacy of their acts (which might
have been conformable to international law but forbidden by English mu-
nicipal law under some special definition of "piracy") these issues were
not presented.
100. 1 GENTILI, supra note 96, Bk. I, ch iv, at 15.

101. Id. at 68.
102. Id. at 101-105.
Finally, in a case involving English possessors of "pirate" property

deriving their title through purchase at Tunis, with Gentili arguing for
the English possessors, he was forced to depart still further from his theo-
retical position that the Barbary states were "piratical" when they li-
censed takings without going to war. Admitting that his former argu-
ment 1 3 went the other way, he tried to distinguish the cases on the
ground that the involvement of the Turkish Treasury ("fiscus") in the
first case was merely a matter of form while in this case the involvement
was direct. But major stress is placed on a more solid policy ground: that
those who are safe under the law of the place of the transaction must be
safe in their rights in England also. This is a basic principle of conflict of
laws and necessary for any country involved in international trade. It
thus indicates a limit to the theoretical discretion of lawyers and states-
men to attach legal labels to suit the particular interest of the moment.
Gentili went even further: "Our countrymen have their trade with Tunis,
Algeria, and many another state taken from them by this claim of the
Venetians that those states are nothing but piratical retreats and that
there is none in them but pirates and that the very magistrates in them
are pirates too."1 4 This frankly political argument for attaching the label
"state" to the Barbary organizations, and "government" to their officials,
is consistent with Gentili's basic idea: That legal labels are attached not
on the basis of facts, but on the basis of their legal and political results by
a policy choice.
Thus Gentili's "recognition" approach had its limits. Reality and the
needs of commerce exposed it as not a rule for judgment by a third party
or scholar, but as a tool of advocacy attractive primarily to flexible-
minded lawyers and statesmen seeking a justification for actions that
might not stand moral scrutiny.
It was not even clear that the Gentili approach would help "legiti-
mate" monarchs dispose of rebels as "pirates." Not only was its legal ba-
sis shaky, but it was not clear politically that treating a dynastic claimant
as a "pirate" chief would have any significant effect in the world of af-
fairs. It was not clear, as it is not clear today, that the legal results of loss
in war are less harsh on the vanquished than defeat as "pirates." Hanging
for treason, for political convenience or influence, or for crime differ as far
as the victim is concerned only to the degree that some sense of dignity
might attach more easily to the political prisoner than to the common
criminal. Yet, it has been common in all ages that political prisoners suf-
fer far more than common criminals in times of stress. And if the alterna-
tive to fighting on in a hopeless cause was to be death on a criminal's
scaffold, it is not clear that calling "piracy" what others might call "priva-
teering licensed by an unrecognized sovereign" would always shorten the
struggle or make victory easier for the established sovereign. Thus the
103. See 1 GENTILI, supra note 104, iv.

104. Id. at 105-112.
particular example does not seem to support the principle Gentili argued
to underlie it.
There are other implications to Gentili's approach. His approach to
"law" seems dominated by the ephemora of policy. If "piracy" is criminal,
by what law? Apparently, by giving to each sovereign the power by "rec-
ognition" or "non-recognition" to classify belligerent behavior as "piracy".
when engaged in by licensees of a foreign government or of a political
movement whose status could be denied, the privateers or soldiers of that
government or movement could be subjected not to international law, but
to the domestic ("municipal," to use the usual word of art) criminal law
of the "non-recognizing" sovereign. In theory, Gentili's approach, based
on an advocate's twist to Roman municipal law, reached the same posi-
tion as was condemned by Plutarch when considering the authority the
Senate had given Pompey to suppress the Cilician "pirates" in 68 B.C.
Now any sovereign could extend his municipal law to the high seas, and
possibly even to foreign land, by authorizing his Admiral or General or
other delegate to wipe out the "pirates" there. Clearly, this broad author-
ity would not survive the politics of Europe, where the extension of one
state's municipal law to the land claimed by another would result either
in a system of competing empires and "war" unmodified by the humani-
tarian and chivalrous law of war that was generally acknowledged in Eu-
rope as necessary, or in the acknowledgment that a European sovereign of
sufficient political power and a claim to authority along traditional lines
could not be properly denied "recognition" as such. But outside of Eu-
rope, where the competition for empire among European sovereigns and
their subjects was becoming intense, the claims of non-European rules to
the legal authority of a European sovereign could be denied without those
implications. And if the struggle grew too difficult to manage or the non-
European too strong to ignore as a political actor or too adept at finding
European allies who would "recognize" his legal capacity to license
soldiers and privateers, the European power that had overextended itself
by abusing the legal tools Gentili would place in its control could simply
10 5
withdraw for a while to reconsider the politics and law of its position.
The vistas opened by Gentili's discovery in the ancient Roman law
relating to latrones and praedones of a pattern of rules that could justify
the most extreme action against non-European political societies, and
against internal forces resisting the move towards centralized control in
the monarchies and bureaucracies of European expansion, were immense
and very attractive to the rising merchant classes.
105. Gentili's approach, which might be considered the birth of "positivism" as an op-
erating theory of international law, is most lucidly elaborated and the role of "recognition"
harmonized with current practice by Kelsen, Recognition in InternationalLaw, 35 AM J.
INT'L L. 604 (1941) and GROSS, STATES AS ORGANS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE PROBLEM
OF AUTOINTERPRETATION, (Lipsky ed.) reprinted in 1 L. GROSS, ESSAYS ON INTERNATIONAL
LAW AND ORGANIZATION 367 (1984).
c. Naturalist Theory: Law as a Moral Order Governing Policy
Gentili's approach was not universally adopted by scholars. Hugo

Grotius (Huigh de Groot) was a Dutch prodigy whose reformulation of
the basic conceptions of the law that governs relations among states was
so influential that he became known as the father of modern international
law. Born in 1583, he began University studies at Leyden eleven years
later, received his Doctorate at fifteen from the University of Orleans
while accompanying John van Oldenbarnevelt on a diplomatic mission,
and was greeted on that occasion by King Henri IV as "The miracle of
Holland."10 The first edition of his masterwork, On the Law of War and
Peace, was published in France in 1625 and incorporates writings dating
back to 1604. Later editions with his own corrections in them appeared in
1631, 1632, 1642 and 1646, the last being published posthumously.' 0 7 His
active life included government service in many capacities, including Am-
bassador from Queen Christina of Sweden to France in 1634-1645,118 and
the 1646 edition of On the law of War and Peace incorporates not only
vast classical scholarship and literary precision, but distills the experience
of an active statesman deeply involved in the political struggles of his
time.
Without mentioning Gentili by name, Grotius took issue with him on
at least two vital points: (1) His classical scholarship, which Grotius cor-
rected in large part; and (2) his emphasis on the power of an established
sovereign through non-recognition to place an active political community
within the legal classification "pirate." Most importantly, by describing
some characteristics of "pirates," Grotius implied a view of the legal order
which permits an objective classification; he indirectly created a defini-
tion of "pirate" quite different from the Gentili definition and equally
influential in the long run.
As to the disagreements, Grotius addressed the same preliminary
question that Gentili addressed as to whether "war" was a fitting legal
classification for all armed contentions. Quoting Pomponius and Ulpian
among others, Grotius came to no sweeping conclusions regarding "pi-
rates" on the basis of their opinions. Instead, he turned to a more direct
analysis of the characteristics of a society before it should be denomi-
nated "piratical," asserting that the label properly fits only those who are
banded together for wrongdoing but does not include societies formed for
other reasons even if also committing unjust acts." 9
Moreover, a commonwealth or state to Grotius did not immediately
cease to be such if it committed an injustice, even as a body; and a gath-
ering of pirates and brigands was not a state, even if they did perhaps
106. DUMBAULD, THE LIFE AND LEGAL WRITINGS OF HUGO GROTIUS 3-4 (1969).
107. Id. at 23, 58. Grotius died in 1645, reportedly regretting that "by undertaking
many things, I have accomplished nothing!" Id. at 18.
108. Id. at 16.
109. 2 GROTIUS, supra note 49, Bk. III, i and ii.
mutually maintain a sort of equality. The reason, according to Grotius, is

that pirates and brigands are banded together for wrongdoing; the mem-
bers of a state, even if at times they are not free from crime, nevertheless
have been united for the enjoyment of rights, and they do render justice
to foreigners."' The problem comes in practice when trying to distinguish
a "piratical" community from a wrong-doing state. Comparing Ulpian's
conclusions about captives not losing their liberty if taken by brigands"'
with the willingness of Ulpian to allow lawful capture to German ma-
rauding tribes on land as described in the works of Caesar and Tacitus," 2
and comparing the celebration of a Roman "Triumph" at the end of the
"war" with Illyrian indiscriminate sea-borne marauders with the refusal
of Rome to order a Triumph to end Pompey's acknowledged war with the
Cilician "pirates,"'' Grotius simply reiterated his view that these legally
vital distinctions which, after all, determine rights to potentially large
amount of captured property"" and the liberty of real people, rest solely
on the criminal purpose of the marauders' association." 5
This basis for discriminating between "piratical" and non-piratical
marauding communities in the classical literature seems insupportable.
There is no evidence that the "peiraton" of Plutarch and Polybius, with
their villages, religious observances, alliances, etc., were banded together
for the purpose of plundering their neighbors any more than were the
Germanic tribes or Illyrians. Moreover, Grotius himself saw that the dis-
tinction could not survive close legal scrutiny or the need politically to
take full account of marauding societies no matter what the purpose of
their original union, once their activities and degree of organization and
their political power passed a certain point. He argued that a "transfor-
mation [mutatio]" may take place with regard to individual chieftains of
brigand bands [praedonum ducibus] who become "lawful chiefs [justi
duces]" in some cases,"' and also to whole communities by mere evolu-
tion." 7 But, instead of reconsidering his definition Grotius immediately
passed on to other things.
In short, Grotius's conception of when the word "pirate" would fit as
110. Id. at 631.

111. See supra note 55.
112. CAESAR, DE BELLO GALLICO, vi,; TACITUS, DE MORIB. GERM. 46 Ann. xii at 27; HIsT.
iv at 50. These citations by Grotius do not seem particularly strong to support his point, but
the point itself, that the Germanic tribes were treated as legal enemies in war despite the
Roman opinion that their political and social organization was contemptible, is beyond
dispute.
113. APPIAN, BELL. ILLYR. ii, 9 PLUTARCH, supra note 33.
114. See generally supra note 54. Justinian's Digest addresses the legal inability of "pi-
rates" to effect a change in the personal status of captives, but extends that legal incapacity
in the case of property only to latrones and praedones.
115. GROTIUS, supra note 49, Bk. III, ch. iii, sec. 2, para. 3.
116. Grotius does not say how this comes about legally, implying that it is not by "rec-
ognition," but by the force of natural law.
117. GROTIUS, supra note 49, Bk. III, ch. iii, sec. 8, quoting with approval St. Augustine,
De Civ. Dei IV, iv.
a legal word of art seems to focus not on recognition or the derivation of

authority from some acknowledged prince, but from facts directly: The
word would fit robber bands on sea or land; it would not fit the Barbary
states or other complete communities, whose primary purpose of associa-
tion is lawful, i.e., defense, raising families, making war. The legal results
that flow from attaching the word seem vague indeed, since Grotius
would allow oaths and promises to "pirates" to be kept and legation to be
maintained. The only really significant passage then is the one offhand-
edly expanding the Justinian Digest's rule regarding the impossibility of a
piratical capture changing the personal status of the captive, to the very
important area of general postliminium-the disposition after recovery of
goods previously captured by "pirates."
Even in this last regard, postliminy, Grotius was not certain that its
rules and exceptions had any application to his time. The expansion of
organized political societies in peaceful contact with each other had, in
his optimistic view, made the Roman law of postliminy obsolete: A lawful
capture in war followed by prize proceedings would legally change title to
captured goods; an unlawful capture in war or the lack of a legal proceed-
ing similar to prize court proceedings in which the various claimants to
the goods would have an opportunity to dispute the lawfulness of the cap-
ture, the contraband nature of the goods and their actual ownership and
destination, would not change the title, and the loser could reclaim his
goods if he could in fact recover them. A lawful capture outside of war he
regarded as impossible.
But what, then, about seizures by the Barbary corsairs? Were those
"states" in a permanent status of war with the states of Europe? Could
their licensees' seizures and their magistrates' legal procedures confer ti-
tle on the corsairs and thus on the European merchants who eventually
bought the goods? Or were they "pirates" who, by the ancient Roman
law, could not get title to goods however elaborate their legal proceed-
ings? Or were they "states" not at war whose depredations could give
them some rights of possession, but with regard to whom the law of post-
liminy should be revived to clarify precisely what those rights were and
against whom they could be asserted? Grotius reported without comment
a judgment of the highest court in Paris delivered while he was writing
[presumably shortly before 1625):
The decision held that goods which had belonged to French citizens,
and had been captured by the Algerians, a people accustomed in their
maritime depredations to attack all others, had changed ownership by
the law of war, and therefore, when recaptured by others, became the
property of those who had recovered them." 8
Despite Grotius's seeming to doubt the legal strength or practical wisdom
of the Paris decision, and bearing in mind that his merely recording it
118. Supra note 49, at Bk. III, ix at 19(2). This language appears in the Amsterdam
(Blaeu) edition of 1632. It appears in all editions after 1632.
added greatly to its weight in those days when there were no formal court
reports and a necessarily different concept of stare decisis, (i.e., the bind-
ingness of common law decisions on later courts) from the current'con-
cept, the inclusion of this judgment in his book may indicate Grotius's
own uneasiness with the classifications that his logic and moral percep-
tion of the legal order had led him to. Of course, if there were no moral
content to the law but only form, the decision was clearly correct: Algiers
met the criteria of statehood by Grotius's own definitions, and the proce-
dures of legal title transfer by the law of Algiers were not questioned.
Moreover, presumably both the former owner and the owner deriving title
through the sale in Algiers were innocent of the taking and certainty in
the law seems always to have been more important for practical men of
affairs and merchants than its conformity to an abstract ideal of morality;
a decision against Algiers would have had to come in the form of a deci-
sion against a merchant who presumably had his insurance or other 17th
century risk-sharing arrangement to fall back on. It is only the moral feel-
ing that such takings seemed more like robbery than like war or tax en-
forcement that seemed bothersome, and that sense of wrong came from
an analogy to the municipal law of robbery that seems misplaced in an
age when privateering was the normal way to recover the loss due to the
acts of foreigners abroad. Perhaps there was an undercurrent of yearning
for Empire, the imposition of Dutch order on the world, or at least on the
non-European part of it. Perhaps it was a deeper sense of order felt in-
creasingly as the excitement of trade and travel combined with classical
learning began to stir European scholars. But this is speculation.
The practical diplomat's position expressed by implication through-
out De Jure Belli ac Pacis, that facts and the needs of politics and moral
order dictate the legal classifications that must be attached to situations,
contrasts strongly with Gentili's position that lawyers and politicians can
apply the labels best suited to their legal and political needs by a simple
exercise of will. Under Grotius's analysis, rebels at a fairly early stage,
when their independent existence, at least as a community capable of bel-
ligerency, could be objectively determined, must be treated as a legal en-
tity exercising belligerent rights under international law. That position, of
course, suited very well the position of the Netherlands rebelling from
Spain. Gentili, the Spanish advocate in London's Royal Council Chamber
sitting in Admiralty insisted that only a license from a recognized sover-
eign could authorize the exercise of soldiers' or privateers' privileges, thus
that legitimate sovereigns attempting to suppress rebellion could treat
the rebels as criminals, even "pirates," with whatever legal results could
be drawn from that classification, without raising any questions of inter-
national law.
Under the analyses of both Grotius and Gentili, robber bands not
purporting to have any license could be treated as "pirates," but the
legal result of this was not to treat "pirates" directly as Roman law" la-
trones" or "praedones." It was to justify attaching the label "pirate" to
those robber bands that would have been called "latrones" or
"praedones," but not "pirata," before the great reanalysis of the late
16th century. Whatever the Roman law treatment of "latrones" and
"praedones," the effect of this was to refer the treatment of those now
called "pirates" back to the municipal law systems of the labeling states,
presumably by unconscious analogy to the primacy of Roman municipal
criminal law in questions involving the disposition of those whom the Ro-
man law called "latrones" or "praedones."
There is another aspect to the Grotian view of the international soci-
ety of the time that must be mentioned. Despite Grotius' reputation as an
able advocate for seas open to all," 9 in De Jure Belli ac Pacis the more
extreme arguments, under which Portuguese monopoly treaties with the
Sultans of the Malay Archipelago and their enforcement against third
states were denominated criminal, 20 were dropped and Grotius concluded
that:
[Slovereignty over a part of the sea is acquired in the same way as
sovereignty elsewhere, that is, . . . through the instrumentality of per-
sons and of territory. It is gained through the instrumentality of per-
sons if, for example, a fleet, which is an army afloat, is stationed at
some point of the sea, by means of territory, insofar as those who sail
over the part of the sea along the coast may be constrained from the
land no less than if they should be upon the land itself.'2 '
Thus the basis for the extension of municipal criminal law to the activi-
ties of foreigners on at least parts of the sea was laid in theory. The the-
ory was that of effective occupation-the power in fact of a sovereign to
dominate a part of the sea and apply his law there as he did on land; a
power that could be exercised not by theoretical claims, but by the use of
military force. Argumentative support for this position was found in vari-
ous Greek and Roman precedents, 2 although the example of the Roman
119. In 1604 Grotius drafted an argumentative brief to justify the Dutch seizure in the
Straits of Singapore of a Portuguese "prize" at a time when the Dutch did not claim bellig-
erent rights against Portugal. Basing his argument of a "natural" right of trade and thus the
inadmissibility in law of Portuguese monopoly treaties with the Sultans of the Malay Archi-
pelago, Grotius concluded that the Portuguese actions were criminal and that Dutch coun-
termeasures could properly include captures in reprisal. I GROTIus, DE JURE PRAEDAE COM-
MENTARIUS 327 (Williams and Zeydel trans. 1950); Dumbauld, supra note 106, at 23-56;
RUBIN, INTERNATIONAL PERSONALITY OF THE MALAY PENINSULA 29-32 (1974).
120. In 2 GROTIus, DE JURE PRAEDAE COMMENTARIUS 147 (Williams & Zeydel transl.
1950) the word "pirate" is used where, in supra note 119 and here, I have used the word
"criminal." It is not certain that either is correct. Volume II of the set contains a photo-
graphic reproduction of the actual Latin manuscript, and in the page corresponding to p.
327 of the translation in Volume I, I cannot find the word pirata or any of its derivatives.
The word latro does appear but not in a place that seems to correspond to either of the two
places in which the translators have used the word "pirate." Grotius' handwriting seems
clear enough, so it would be well to be cautious about this translation and its use of the
word "pirate."
121. GRoTIus, supra note 49, at Bk. II,Ch. iii, para. 13(2).
122. E.g., Athenian claims asserted against Megara in THUCYDIDES, supra note 7, IV,
cxviii; and Dio Cassius' mention of "all the sea which belongs to the Roman Empire." D.
CASSIUS, ROMAN HISTORY, XLII.
Senate conferring monarchical powers on Pompey in 68 B.C. is not cited.

Thus, as Gentili had found a legal rationale for the extension of munici-
pal law to foreign territory, so Grotius, reversing his earlier position as
the sea power of The Netherlands increased, found a rationale for the
extension of municipal law by any state with a warship to that part of the
sea within the military control of that warship.
d. Some Implications
It may thus be seen that the word "piracy" entered modern English
usage in a vernacular sense to cover almost any interference with prop-
erty rights, whether licensed or not, and was applied as a pejorative with
political implications but no clear legal meaning. The word in its Latin
form entered the vocabulary of lawyers concerned with public order in
the late 16th and early 17th century as a synonym for action, whether or
not related to property rights, which was conceived to be unauthorized
within the legal system posited by the lawyers using the term. Thus, it
could be applied to "rebels" violating the constitutional order of a single
country; persons within the allegiance of one monarch acting against that
monarch under the purported authority of another monarch; foreign pri-
vateers whose property rights were being denied; or even the officials of a
political society denied legal status as a person subject to the "interna-
tional legal order," as defined by each ruler in Christendom for himself,
with the legal effect that the officials of that "non-state" would be re-
garded in the denying state as lacking the legal power to change property
rights or carry on a legal "war" or prescribe law in any territory. In its
most expansive meanings, no implication of criminality existed; it was not
a crime by any law to be an official of an unrecognized political society.
On the other hand, an individual acting against the criminal law, or the
law regarding "treason" or "mutiny," of a state could not exculpate him-
self from the operation of that law by claiming a license to act issued by
an unrecognized "government." A link between individual criminality and
the international legal order was thus put in place, as the existence of
political groups outside the legal order, "outlaw" groups, meant that ac-
tion taken pursuant to the "outlaw's" authority was, as far as an official
within the legal order was concerned, unauthorized and, if that action vio-
lated a rule of law of the enforcing official, and occurred within his per-
ception of his jurisdiction to enforce the rule, could be punished regard-
less of the link to an "outlaw" organization.
To follow the evolution of this conception further, it is necessary not
only to understand the fundamental difference in the approaches to de-
fining the legal order taken by "naturalists" and "positivists," but to
know that as governmental control tightened with the rise of a secular
legal order in Europe based on effective control and ambition, the outer
limits of national assertions of jurisdiction to prescribe rules of property
and criminal behavior were explored. Some of those limits have already
been mentioned, as it was pointed out that legal words that did ot reflect
reality may have governed some statesmen's actions, but that legal policy
as well as political action lost persuasiveness and effectiveness as it de-

parted from reality as perceived by those whose actions were supposed to
be influenced by it. As the vice of "naturalism" is to attribute legal force
to the merely moral commands that the lawyer or statesman would like to
be law but which is denied by others, so the vice of "positivism" is to
treat as if real the model built by mere words to reflect what the lawyer
or statesman would like to be real rather than what actually is. Whereas
"naturalism" imputes consensus where there may be none, "positivism"
can lead to solipsism-an emphasis on the arbitrary aspects of consent as
the basis of the law-making process, and a retreat to "de jure" dreams of
power.
In any case, in addition to its usage in the international legal order,
the word "piracy" in the 16th and early 17th century was acquiring a
meaning in the municipal legal orders of the countries of Europe whose
views of law were to dominate sophisticated legal thought for the next
four hundred years. It is impossible to understand the evolution of the
conceptions of "piracy" in international law without first understanding
not only some rudiments of the conception of the international legal or-
der and some legal theory, but also it is necessary to consider the munici-
pal law usage, particularly in connection with municipal criminal law and
its jurisdiction to apply to the acts of foreigners abroad, and municipal
property law and the need to mesh that law with foreign property law so
that private property crossing national boundaries remain secure in the
possession of the foreign "owner." We now turn to that.
D. English Municipal Law and Piracy in the Renaissance
1. Introduction
It is beyond the powers of a sole scholar in reasonable time to ana-

lyze the municipal laws that might relate to the conception of "piracy" of
all countries, or even all European countries, or even a few major Euro-
pean countries. It is fortunately possible to trace the municipal law of
England" 3 as it relates to "piracy" from the time it began to emerge from
the obscurity of time and the vagaries of medieval records, through the
great formative days of Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) and Sir William
Scott (Lord Stowell) (1745-1836) to modern times. As in the examination
of classical sources, it is necessary to begin with a word of caution. The
word "pirate" does not appear with a precise meaning in English legal
literature until the 16th century, and attempts to trace the law regarding
"piracy" back beyond that time all seem to assume that other legal words
carried the identical meaning." ' The assumption may be correct, but it is
123. It was the law of England that became the most influential set of prescriptions and
was administered by the most wide ranging system of naval activity and courts. This system
lies at the roots of American conceptions of the interplay between the municipal law of
"piracy" and international law.
124. It is not proposed in this place to trace the word or the concept (if there is any
not convincingly argued in any known source despite the extraordinary

volume of writing devoted to the history of the English law relating to
"piracy." Typical of the confusion, and worth mentioning only because of
the eminence and scholarly reputations earned by the people involved, is
the elaborate history of the English and international laws of "piracy" by
Chief Justice Cockburn in Regina v. Keyn1 2 5 and the compilations of doc-
uments by Reginald G. Marsden. 2 6 In the first, Lord Cockburn refers"
in some detail to two cases of Common Law indictment for "piracy" in
the time of Kings Edward II and Edward III. In fact, the word does not
seem to appear in any of his quotations. 128 Marsden, while reproducing
several documents that use the word in the 14th century and even earlier,
notes:
As a legal term "piracy" belongs to a later date. The Latin word is
common from the first, but it was not always used in an evil sense. In
1309 wines are stated to have been captured "more piratico;" in 1353
"piratae et alii inimici nostri" are spoken of . . ., and in 1359 one
Robert Blake, who robbed a ship at sea, is called "pirata". . . But in
the twelfth century ships in the service of William II are spoken of as
"piratae"-"jammare munierat piratis . . .; Anglici vero piratae qui
curam maris a rege susceperant . . .;" and in 1324 Edward II pre-
pared for war "Admiralos et piratas super mare constituendo" . . .
Before the latter part of the 14th century robbery at sea seems to
have been dealt with in the King's courts as one and the same crime
as robbery on land; and so of murder and assault. The records do not,
discrete concept) of "piracy" in non-legal English usage. It might be useful to those so in-
clined to mention that the earliest trace of the concept seems to be in the 8th century A.D.
epic BEOWULF, see Chickering, BEOWULF; A DUAL LANGUAGE EDITION.
125. Regina v. Keyn, 2 Ex.D. 63 (1876); reprinted in 2 BRITISH INTERNATIONAL LAW
CASES (hereinafter cited as B.I.L.C.) 701, at 756-800. In this 7-6 decision, the majority held
that the laws of England did not apply to foreigners in foreign ships even in England's
territorial waters in the absence of a clear expression by Parliament that the law was in-
tended to apply beyond land (except to British flag vessels).
126. MARSDEN, SELECT PLEAS IN THE COURT OF ADMIRALTY (ed. 1894, 1897); MARSDEN,
supra note 97.
127. Cockburn relied heavily on HALE, PLEAS OF THE CROWN 77 (1685 ed.), but does not
seem to have checked Hale's sources. Hale in fact refers to "Piracy" and "depredation upon
the Sea" as a species of "petit treason, if done by a [British] subject." Hale implies without
any evidence that it was triable at common law until the Statute of Treasons, 25 Edw. III
statute 5 c. 2 (1352). But his source is clearly Coke, who in his THIRD INSTITUTE, emphasized
not the "piracy" aspect of the offense, but its relationship to the law of "treason," limiting
the jurisdiction of British Common Law courts to the jurisdiction they had in other cases of
"petit Treason" and in no way implying any purview over the acts of foreigners outside of
England. See infra note 193. Aside from this possible unintended implication in Hale, there
was no doubt that Hale knew that the offense of "piracy" was triable only at Civil Law, not
Common Law, in England from 1352 to 1536. "Civil Law" was the body of law administered
by Admiralty and some other non-Common Law courts of England. Thus, to the degree
Cockburn meant to imply that "piracy" in any way pertinent to the case of foreign actions
on board a foreign ship was historically an offense against English Common Law, he was
certainly wrong with regard to actions after 1352, and probably wrong with regard to actions
before then.
128. Regina v. Keyn 2 B.I.L.C. 759.
to the present writer, appear to support the view insisted upon by

some of the judges in Reg. v. Keyn . . . that piracy has from the first
been recognized by the law of England, as a crime distinct from rob-
bery and murder on land." '
On the other hand, Marsden himself used the word "piracy" in head-
notes to various documents in which neither the word nor any clear con-
cept appears; his indexes use the word to refer to cases that seem to have
nothing to do with the word or any clear concept of "piracy," and in at
least one place in his table of contents he refers to a document that seems
irrelevant in both word and sense to anything related to "piracy" and for
which he does not use the word in his own headnote."3 ° Occasionally he
uses the word to translate Latin documents in which the word "pirata" or
its derivatives does not appear; since his own note quoted above indicates
his awareness of how deceptive that can be, the practice is inexplicable.
In these circumstances, and finding similar doubts and problems to at-
tend reference to other deservedly reputable works,"' it seems necessary
to return once again to primary sources, so happily collected by Marsden,
hoping only that the reprints purporting to set out original language are
32
more accurate than the translations.1
There are at least three analytically distinct problems that must be
seen clearly before it is possible to understand the growth of English law
relating to "piracy" and its relationships to international law. First, there
is the question of jurisdiction: Is there a court in England empowered by
English law to consider the case? Second, there is the question of sub-
stance: Is the particular act complained of a violation of English law?
Third, there is the question of the reach outside of England of the pre-
scriptions of English law and the enforcement jurisdiction of English
courts. Each of these problems contains within it a whole host of subsidi-
ary questions and the answers to any one of them change the pattern in
ways that effect the whole problem and, indeed, the perceptions of all
three problems. Because the interplay of these three problems is so com-
plex, and the implications of tracing any particular pattern of legal be-
havior in disregard of the entire picture are so destructive of coherence, a
basically chronological approach will be taken.
In the earliest documents, as noted above, the word "pirate" (the
documents are in Latin, the word "pirata") and its derivatives are not
used in any sense pertinent to this study. Indeed, Marsden's headnotes to
documents of 1216 and 1228 relating to a ship "piratically captured" and
"A pirate hanged" do not reflect either language or concept in the docu-
129. I MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 99-100.

130. Id. at 2, 6, 10, 31, 46, 74, 89, 136, 371, 388, 391. This list is not exhaustive.
131. E.g., HOLDSWORTH, A HIsToRY oF ENGLISH LAW (1922-1928).
132. Since in some cases Marsden modernizes the spellings, and in others he seems to
prefer what seem quaint and false antique spellings, it is impossible to be certain about the
accuracy of his reprinted "original" texts without duplicating his entire research; a patent
impossibility at this time.
ments reproduced. In the first 3M King John directs his port bailiffs to find
and deliver to its owners on presentation of proof of ownership a ship and
goods alleged to have been diverted, and to hold for further action those
in whose hands the ship and goods may be found. The case may involve
maritime embezzlement and in any case seems a civil rather than a crimi-
nal matter with an undifferentiated legal power in the King to resolve
both civil and criminal aspects of it. In the second, the criminal charge for
which one Willelmus de Briggeho was hanged involved consorting with
general evil-doers who robbed a ship off the port of Sandwich (". . . Wil-
lelmus de Briggeho, suspensus postea pro consensu malefactorum navis
depredate ante Sandwicum. ,)..3, Not only is the word "pirata" or its
derivatives not used, but again the facts are so unclear as to make any
conclusions doubtful. All the people involved might well have been En-
glish, the vessel robbed might have been English, the location seems to
have been mentioned for the purpose of identifying the incident, rather
than as significant to establish any court's or nation's jurisdiction, and
the location is so closely linked with a bit of land clearly within the realm
of England that it is impossible to say that any concept of extending that
jurisdiction seaward was involved.
The earliest reference to an international incident in the modern
sense appears in a document of 1289. King Edward I by that document
established a Commission to inquire into "certain trespasses [transgres-
siones]" committed by Englishmen against some Frenchmen and com-
plained of by the King of France. The Commissioners were directed to
"cause due restitution to be made of the goods."' 3 5
Apparently private recapture, self-help, was the normal remedy of

seamen despoiled of their property in those rough times, and well into the
next century, 36 but there is mention of letters of marque in documents of
1293 and 1295 indicating at least a Royal attempt to get control over the
activities of his mariners when foreign ships might become involved and
protests from foreign princes could be expected. 37 In the latter case, the
letter ("licentia marcandi") granted an English petitioner the legal right
at the law of England to take back from Portuguese "sons of perdition"
the value of goods seized by them under license of the King of Portugal,
who is alleged to have got a tenth of the booty. It is noteworthy that the
English license is not directed against the particular people who took the
English goods, but against any subjects of the realm of Portugal. What
seems to have been involved was not an attempt to get control of robbery
at sea, but of private legal remedies; to limit the rights of English victims
133. 1 MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 2.

134. Id. at 7.
135. Id. at 10-11.
136. Id. at 8, 69. Marsden interprets these documents of 1276 and 1341 as involving the
King in suits before his own Common Law courts for a share of the value of a "prize" taken
by English seamen without license of the Crown. The King apparently lost.
137. Id. at 19, 38-39. See supra notes 101, 102.
to the equivalent of restitution for injury done by a foreigner, and to

avoid as far as possible committing the public forces and resources of the
Crown to the petty struggle.
It was about this time that the post of "Admiral" was established in
England as a magnate authorized to oversee the issuance of letters of
marque and reprisal and their due performance and ultimate
cancellation.SS
It is not clear what the source of substantive law was that the Admi-
ral was supposed to apply. The Commissioners of 1289, responding to
complaints by the King of France against English seamen, were directed
to make the restitution "in accordance with the law and custom of our
realm," England.' In 1361, a prior commission 14 0 to try the case in a
Common Law court (the accused having been caught in England with
their booty) was revoked and replaced by a commission authorizing "our
Admirals" to try the case "according to the maritime law.' 4 ' But the
"maritime law" is not likely to have been conceived as a law foreign to
England. The great Code of the Laws of Oleron, compiled in a small is-
land within the feudal lands of Eleanor, Duchess of Guienne, the wife of
Henry II and mother of Kings John and Richard I, had been promulgated
by her for Guienne in the Gascon tongue, promulgated with revisions
then in England by Richard and John, re-issued by Henry III in 1266,
and confirmed by Edward III in 1329.'42 They were distinguished from
the Common Law of England by the very fact of royal promulgation as a
Code; the power of interpretation was given to the Admirals as benefi-
ciaries of royal patronage rather than Common Law judges with their own
traditions of independence and the legal power to develop custom, as dis-
tinct from statutory or decree law, in both criminal and civil matters.
Presumably the merchants most directly concerned with the terms of
maritime law preferred this system also, since their interests could more
easily be pressed at the royal court or with a royal administrator, the
Admiral, than with Common Law judges when a change in the law or its
interpretation was sought in the interest of English sea-borne commerce.
Thus, when a commission of 1374 directed the leading administrators of
England's Southeastern coast to hear and determine various criminal
matters arising at sea along the coasts, "supra mare per costeras," of
Kent (the word "piracy" is not mentioned: the list of offenses included
138. Id. at 19, (revoking a letter of "marque or reprisal" (marquandiseu gagiandi) in

1293); id. at 38-39, (informing the administrators of the realm of the proper issuance of
letters of marque by "our nephew, John of Brittany" in 1295); id. at 88-89 (transferring the
trial of English malefactors from the Common Law courts to the jurisdiction of the Admi-
ral's court because the robbery had occurred at an unspecified place at sea, not within any
particular shire of England in 1361-it is not clear whether this case involved any foreigners
or letters of marque.)
139. Id. at 10-11.
140. Id. at 84-88.
141. Id. at 88-89.
142. 1 Peters, Admiralty Decisions . . .app. at iii(1807).
the Common Law and non-legal words "robberies, depredations, discords

and slayings")1 4 3 it seems significant that the law to be applied was "the
law and custom of our realm of England and . . . the law of the sea.""'"
The implication is not that the law of the sea is different from the King's
law in England, but that it is different from the other law of England, the
Common Law which includes its own custom. The reference to the "law
of the sea" pointedly omits any reference to custom.
The word "pirate" enters the English legal vocabulary via Latin com-
missions in the 15th century. The first direct legal use of the word ap-
pears to have been in an order of Henry VI in 1443 directing the restitu-
tion to Englishmen of goods taken from them by "pirates."I" The context
is purely civil-a question of property rights, not of crimes, and the word
seems to be used in a pejorative, not a technical, sense. Similarly, a Proc-
lamation by Henry VII in 1490 mentions:
divers and monyfold spoliations and robberies .. uppon the se unto
the said subgettis of the said most high and myghty princes [of Eng-
land and various foreign places] . . . as well by their enemyes as by
other pirattis and robbers, which, as it is said, daily resorte into divers
portes and places of this his realme of England, and ther be suffered
to utter and sell their prises, spoiles, and pillages . . .146
This seems to classify the "pirates" with "enemies" as well as with "rob-
bers," and classifies what might be lawful spoils with the booty of wrong-
ful takings. Significantly, the Proclamation does not purport to apply the
law of England or the "law of the sea" or "maritime law" to the first
takers of the goods. To discharge the King's international obligations to
his fellow princes it takes a strictly territorial approach, commanding
that:
[N]o manner of persons ... from henssforth comfort, take no
receyve, in any ... places of this his realme any of the said mysdoers,
ne any merchandisez or goodes by them spoiled or takyn. .. uppon
payn of forfeiture of the same merchaundises . . . or to the value
thereof, for restitution to be made to the parties
47 grevid, and uppon
payn of imprisonment . . . at the Kinges will.
The command is directed at Englishmen and perhaps foreign merchants
only when they are in England; punishment for the "enemies," "pirates"
and "robbers" is not prescribed, but only for the receivers of their goods
in England.
The earliest reference to "pirates" in a context that seems to attach
specific legal results to their activities seems to be a Latin letter of ap-
pointment by Henry VIII in 1511 to John Hopton, who was directed to:
143. 1 MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 100-101.

144. Id. at 101-102.
145. Id. at 132-134. The Latin original uses the word pirata at 135.
146. Id. at 145-146.
147. Id.
[S]eize and subdue all and singular such spoilers, pirates, exiles, and
outlaws [praedones, pirates, exules, et bannitos] wheresoever they
shall be seized, to destroy them and to bring all and singular of them,
who are captured, into one of our ports, and to hand over and deliver
them, when so brought in, to our commissioners . . ."'
Whether or not this instruction was actually intended to apply to foreign-
ers in foreign vessels, or only to Englishmen and persons of any allegiance
in English vessels, is not clear. Nor is it clear how far from the coasts of
England Hopton was expected to range; he appears to have confined his
activities to areas within easy sail of English ports" 9 and the more gen-
eral language of the letter of appointment may never have been intended
to reach farther. Moreover, the degree to which the commissioners men-
tioned in the letter had jurisdiction in derogation of Admiralty courts and
Common Law courts, whether in fact there were Admiralty courts func-
tioning throughout the period, are questions it is impossible to resolve
without what appears excessive research.'
The first attempt to organize the administration of justice regarding
maritime English offenses and have it apply in a regular way, through
permanent tribunals instead of through ad hoc tribunals set up under ad
hoc commissions of the King, was not until 1535."' The Preamble to that
statute says:
Where pirates, thieves, robbers and murders upon the sea, many times
escape unpunished, because the trial of their offences hath heretofore
been ordered before the admiral, or his lieutenant or commissary, af-
ter the course of the civil laws, the nature whereof is, that before any
judgment of death can be given against the offenders, either they
must plainly confess their offences, (which they will never do without
torture or pains) or else their offences be so plainly and directly
proved by witnesses indifferent, such as saw their offences committed,
which cannot be gotten but by chance at a few times, because such
offenders commit their offences upon the sea . . 2"
To cure these legal problems, the statute provides that all "felonies, rob-
beries, murders and manslaughters" should henceforth be tried by special
Commissions using the forms of the Common Law, under which convic-
tion and execution were easier. The word "piracies" is not used in the
operative part of the text.
Section IV of the statute of 1535 allows for an unlicensed taking at
sea not to be considered criminal if only necessities of the voyage were
148. Id. at 146-147.

149. Id. at xv, xviii.
150. Id. at 149, where it is indicated that the Admiralty courts had been allowed to
atrophy and were revived only in 1520.
151. 27 Hen. VIII ch. 4 (1535); reprinted in 4 Pickering, The Statutes at Large 348.
(1763).
152. Id. at 348-349. The 18th century English must be Pickering's transliteration. The
original language is not given in this source. Presumably it was identical with the language
quoted below from the Preamble to 28 Hen. VIII ch. 15 (1536).
taken, and a written promise to pay for them was given and redeemed
within four months if the taking were "this side of the straits of Marroke"
or 12 months if on the other side (in the Mediterranean). There is no
mention of takings across the Atlantic or on the other side of the Straits
of Magellan; but then Drake had not yet made his circumnavigation. The
statute is silent as to the nationality of the taker or the victim, or the
nationality of the vessels. Nor does it deal with the defense of vessels
anywhere. It appears to envisage the arrest in the normal Common Law
fashion of accused malefactors in England; it thus merely replaces the
discretionary Admiralty courts, using Civil Law procedures, with tribu-
nals (Commissions) to be appointed and to use Common Law procedures
outside both Admiralty and Common Law systems in England without
affecting the normal rules of jurisdiction.
The statute of 1535 was superseded the following year by a nearly
identical statute, 28 Hen. VIII c. 15 (1536).' The Preamble to the stat-
ute of 1535 referred to "pirates, thieves, robbers and murders." The Pre-
amble to the statute of 1536 refers to "traitours pirotes theves robbers
murtherers and confederatours." Presumably, "traitours" and "confeder-
atours" were added to the list to take account of evolving Common Law
thought that wanted to classify "piracy" as an Admiralty term for breach
of feudal relationships, equivalent to the master-servant bond in days
when status seemed more important legally than contract ties. Under the
laws of Oleron, the master of a vessel had some of the legal powers of a
feudal superior over his crew. 54 Thus, "traitours" and "confederatours"
(i.e., conspirators, those who join together to commit a wrongful act)
would relate to passengers and crew within the vessel, and seem to refer
to what today would be called "mutineers."' 5 5 Like the statute of 1535
the statute of 1536 drops the word "pirate" ["pirotes"] in its substantive
terms:
All treasons felonyes robberies murders and confederacies, hereafter
to be comytted in or uppon the see, or in any other haven ryve creke
or place where the admyrall or admyralls have or pretende to have
power auctorities or jurisdiction, shall be equired harde determyned
and judged in such shires and places in the realme as shall be lymyt-
ted by the Kynges Comission or Comissions to be directed for the
same, in like fourme and condicioun as if any such offence or offences
hadd been comytted or done in or uppon the lande; and such commis-
sions shall be ... directed to the admyrall [or his delegates] . . .and
153. Id. at 441-443; 26 AM. J. INT'L L. 913-915 (Spec. Supp. 1932).

154. See supra note 127; See supra, note 142, the laws of Oleran arts. V-VII, XII-XIII,
XIX. The blend between mere contract service and a status relationship entered into by
contract (as the feudal relationship was enter#ed into by contract forms also) is too complex
to analyze here. See POLLOCK & MAITLAND, THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LAW (2d ed. 1898).
155. "Mutiny" enters the legal vocabulary in England only with the adoption of the
Mutiny Act of 1689, 1 Will. & Mary ch. 5 (1689), referring not to mariners, but to soldiers
who "excite, cause, or join in any mutiny or sedition in the army, or shall desert their majes-
ties' service in the army."
to iij or iiij such other substantiall persons as shall be named or ap-

pointed by the lorde chauncellor of Englande . . .Il
The legal words of art did not include any reference to international
law or Roman law or, indeed, any concept of "piracy" except in the non-
technical recitation of the preamble; instead the words of art of the En-
glish Common Law of crimes were used. It is in that context that the
word "felonyes" makes sense; the distinction being drawn involved the
technical English law of "high treason," "petit treason" and Common
Law crime, as yet incompletely distinguished from trespass, or tort
actions. 15
The extraterritorial reach of this legislation was no more clear than
before. It was apparently restricted to the places in which the Admiral by
the law of England had legal power, authority or jurisdiction. That appar-
ently included vessels flying the English flag wherever they might be
afloat, including foreign ports and the navigable waters of England.15 But
it was never clear whether it extended to foreign vessels on the high seas
or on internal navigable waters of England, which were within the Com-
mon Law courts' jurisdiction. The case of Regina v. Keyn showed at great
length that there was considerable doubt, ultimately resolved rightly or
wrongly against the Admiral's pretentions, if he had any, that it extended
to foreign vessels outside England's Common Law jurisdiction even
within three miles of the English coast.
The system remained fundamentally unaltered through the entire
period of this study. 5 9
2. In Rem Property Adjudications
The earliest technical legal usage of the word "pirate" in an English

court reflects the Roman law origins of the "Civil Law" applied in those
English courts not governed by the "Common Law" of England.'60 In
156. 4 Pickering, supra note 157.

157. "A mere common crime, however wicked and base, mere wilful homicide, or theft,
is not a felony; there must be some breach of that faith and trust which ought to exist
between lord and man." 1 POLLOCK & MAITLAND, supra note 154, at 304. By Coke's time
"felony" had come to cover all serious Common Law offenses, but not Admiralty offenses
and not treason, which had become a statutory offense with its own procedures. See COKE,
THIRD INSTITUTE 15; See also 2 POLLOCK & MAITLAND. As to the relationship between "tres-
pass" and "felony," see id. at 511-512.
158. The precise territorial boundary between Admiralty jurisdiction and the Common
Law jurisdiction evolved over time. The first boundary was merely between things done
upon the sea and things done within the realm. 13 Rich. II ch. 5 (1390). Within two years
Parliament had decided a clearer line was needed, and drew it at the bridges nearest the
mouth of the river, offenses upstream belonging to the Common Law courts and offenses
downstream to the Admiralty. 15 Rich. II ch. 3 (1392).
159. Cf. Sir William Scott, Hercules 2 Dods, Hercules 363, 165 Eng. Rep. 1511, at 1517
(1819); 26 Am. J. Int'l L. 910 (Spec. Supp. 1932).
160. See, NICHOLAS, supra note 53, at 2, 98-103; Admiralty actions based on the adjudi-
cation of property rights trace back to Roman Law, thus Civil Law, concepts. The experts in
1553 John Clerke, "Proctor General" of the Admiralty court of England,

referred to goods "left and deposited by Henry Strangwis, Peter Kil-
ligrew, Thomas Killigrew and Baptist Roane & others .. .pirates, rob-
bers and malefactors [piratas predones et malefactores] . . .now being
under arrest."' 1 Apparently it was the goods that were arrested, not the
"pirataspredones et malefactores," who had fled. The goods were confis-
cated and the various claimants were given a chance before the Admiralty
court in an in rem proceeding to prove their property rights. It is unclear
whether the denial of property rights to those who had fled (presumably
for fear of criminal prosecution in the Common Law courts or before Ad-
miralty Commissions under the statute of Henry VIII) was a reflection of
a legal conclusion that "pirates" could not possess property at English
Common or Civil Law. It might equally well have been a mere incident of
the Civil Law system of in rem proceedings under which those with
claims to property must submit those claims for adjudication in the light
of the claims of others, and failure to present a claim for whatever reason
resulted in loss of the possible rights and carried no criminal law or other
general implications.
The notion that calling the possessor of a ship a "pirate" would de-
prive him of legal rights to a ship seemed very useful to Sir Julius Cae-
sar,16 2 who applied the word to possible claimants in a series of widely
different in rem cases. For example, in 1585 the Diana was arrested at
the order of Caesar and condemned as a "pirate" ship to be sold for the
benefit of the Admiral when her Master, a Frenchman named Killie, sail-
ing under a French flag, did not appear. Killie was considered a "pirate"
by Caesar even though it seems possible that he had a French commis-
sion, or letters of marque and reprisal, authorizing in the name of France
his depredations against English ships. s3 There was no criminal action
involved.
In another case in 1598, Caesar gave title to a prior owner against a
purchaser who derived his claim to title from an Englishman "commonly,
openly, publicly, and notoriously reputed to be a pirate [articulatispro
piratacommuniter, polam, publice, et notorie reputatum fuisse et esse]"
in the complete absence of criminal proceedings or other evidence as to
the place of the taking or the circumstances surrounding it.'"
Civil Law in England were called "civilians," and sharp distinctions with elements of jeal-
ousy are evident in the attitudes of Common law judges to the Civil Law and the civilians at
this period.
161. 2 MARSDEN, supra note 126, at 84-86.
162. Like, GENTILI, supra note 88, Caesar was Italian by birth. He was the leading Brit-
ish Admiralty judge, 1584-1605. 3 Dictionary of National Biography 656.
163. 2 MARSDEN, supra note 126, at 161. Sir Julius simply recited as if proved that the
vessel was piratarum super alto mari infra jurisdictionem marittimam Admirallitatisan-
glie. He did not define "pirate," or "high seas" or his conception of the Admiral's jurisdic-
tion as it might have applied in the case.
164. 1 MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 298. It is not known why Marsden dropped "and is
[et esse]" (a pirate) from his translation, or what Laesar's evidence was for that conclusion.
In 1608 another Admiralty judge, Thomas Crompton, used the word

in a similar way to deny title to James and John Powntis, purchasers "in
foreign parts" of Venetian goods "captured. . . by one John Ward,', and
other pirates and sea rovers" and sold to them apparently via official
channels in Algiers. The goods or their value were granted to the Vene-
tian Ambassador for the merchants he represented.' This case seems to
avoid the problem of a commission for Ward, or the possibility that his
capture was a "lawful prize" or a confiscation for non-payment of Alge-
rine transit tolls, by simply calling Ward a "pirate" and ignoring the
probable subsequent involvement of the Algerine officials in a legal trans-
action to transfer title. There was no criminal proceeding or attempt at
definition.
While not pertinent to the definition of the word "piracy," it might
be mentioned in this place that the use of that word to bring into play the
idea that stolen goods should be returned to their previous owner because
thieves by ancient principle cannot pass title they do not have, even to
innocent purchasers, created special problems with regard to the use of
the word. Without denying the superior title of the prior owner to the
title a thief might assert merely by his possession of the goods, the needs
of commerce required greater stability of title when dealing with a foreign
seaman; a merchant had to be able to buy goods from one who might
later turn out to have been a "pirate" (however defined), or a major legal
impediment would limit international seaborne commerce. The solution
to this problem appears to have been not only the easy acknowledgment
of title transfers under Barbary states law for the benefit of corsairs (or
"pirates"), but also the application in English law of the rule that:
if a Man commit Piracy upon the Subjects of another Prince or Re-
publique (though in League with us) and brings the Goods into Eng-
land, and sells them in a Market Overt; the same shall bind, and the
Owners are for ever concluded, and if they should go about in the
Admiralty to question the property, in order to restitution [sic], they
167
will be prohibited.
Englishmen's goods found in England were still to be returned to their
English prior owner as a matter of statute law.'
A strange incident in 1615 demonstrates the vernacular use of the
word by the highest officials of England to refer to an Admiralty in rem
case in which the word "piracy" was not in fact used but the legal results
were drawn without it. In 1615, Captain Newporte of the Centaur invited
the Captain of the French ship L'Esperance to dinner off Cape Verde.
Newporte then seized the French ship, whose owner turned out to be the
politically influential Governor of Dieppe, Francois de Villiers Houdan.
165. Apparently the same person that had become notorious in English folk ballad at
about this time. See generally, supra note 72.
166. 1 MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 373.
167. MOLLOY, DE JURE MARTIMO, bk. I, ch. iv, para. xxi, at 12 (1677).
168. Id. at para. xx.
The English Admiralty court under Judge Daniel Dun decreed restitution
of the vessel or its value to the French owner, ending a diplomatic crisis.
There is no evidence of Captain Newporte's authority, if any, for his ac-
tion, nor is there any known record of a criminal proceeding growing out
of the incident. But in the Privy Council Register for 11 July 1617 there
is a reference to money held "for satisfaction of a sentence given in the
Court of Admyraltie on the behalfe of Viliers Howden, a governor of
Deipe, concerning a pyracie committed upon a shipp of his by one capten
Newporte.' ' 6 9 Apparently, the word "pyracie" was used in a non-legal
sense to mean something like "unauthorized taking," with an implication
of crime; no clear legal sense seems to have been intended. The only legal
action mentioned was the one for restitution. The word "sentence" does
not seem to refer to any criminal court's action, but to the judgment of
the Admiralty court in an in rem proceeding. It is in this context that it is
possible to interpret the remark of King James I in 1624170 referring to
the East India Company as "pirates" merely for failing to pay him what
he felt was his share of their lawful captures.
3. Outlawry, Crime and Cicenser
From the mid 16th to the mid 17th centuries the word "pirate" and
its derivatives was used more and more frequently in official English doc-
uments not related to property-rights cases before the Admiralty courts,
and had acquired a meaning as a vague basis for ever-expanding English
assertions of jurisdiction. In 1569 Queen Elizabeth had by proclamation
denounced "all pyrats and rovers upon the seas" and declared them "to
be out of her protection, and lawfully to be by any person taken, pun-
ished, and suppressed with extremity." ' ' Until 1569 ships suspected of
involvement in "piracy" and privateering without a commission had been
treated with strict attention to English forms; they (the ships) were to be
arrested only after arriving at English ports, and Vice-Admirals were sim-
ply warned against harboring or countenancing "pirates" within their ju-
risdiction as that jurisdiction was established by their commissions.' 72 An
169. 1 MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 388-394. The privy Council extract is at 394, n.1.
Quaere if this is the same Newporte mentioned in CHAMBERLAIN, supra note 69, at 34, (let-
ter no. 61 dated 28 February 1603) as having taken a treasure rumored to be worth two
million pounds in Nombre de Dios and Cartagena.
170. See supra note 80.
171. 1 MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 224, from a recital in an unsigned opinion Marsden
identifies as probably a copy of a 1579 legal memorandum from David Lewes, judge of Ad-
miralty, to the lord Admiral setting out the bases for the Admiral's legal authority. See full
text infra at note 179. This is the earliest document found setting forth a basis for what
later came to be asserted as "universal" jurisdiction in all countries to enforce their domes-
tic laws against foreign "pirates" for their acts solely directed against foreign victims. That
the roots of that concept lay in the municipal (English) law of "outlawry" and not in any
international practice or Roman law, appears to have been forgotten by later writers and
statesmen.
172. Id. at 173, n.1, paraphrasing "Instructions to Vice-Admirals of the coast," dated
indication of the difficulties of an increasingly centralized administration

gaining legal control of English seamen continuing the ancient practice of
re-capture without a license, abusing their opportunities and making gen-
eral commerce of English as well as foreign merchants unsafe, lies in the
recitation of fact accompanying a Warrant from Queen Elizabeth to the
Warden of the Cinque Ports (the English fortified towns strategically sit-
uated on the South coast) in 1577:
Whereas there is an unyversall complainte made as well by our owne
merchaunts and fishermen, as also by other merchaunts straungers
being the subjects of our frinds and allyes, of the great number of
pyrats and sea rovers haunting and keeping the narrow seas and
streames thereof . . .; We having care that our streames should be
quyet and voyde of such malefactors, and understanding that sute
hath ben made to our previe Counsell on the behalf of divers townes
corporat of our realme, being annoyed by such pyrates and sea rovers
haunting their coasts, to have license to sett fourth shippes for the
chastening and repressing of the said malefactors, offering to do the
same at their owne adventure, proper costs and chardges. . . by these
presents do geve full power and authoritie unto you, to give and
graunte commissions under the seal of your office of the Cinque
Portes to as many, as well cities and townes corporat of this our
realme, as you shall thinke good, as also to others whom you shall
thinke such as will not abuse the same, to arme and sett fourth. . . to
purge and clere the sea coasts of such evill persons . . .13
Despite the language of outlawry in the Proclamation of 1569, the War-
rant of 1577 requires that the forms of English law be followed if any
property were to change hands as a result of the law-enforcement effort.
Persons licensed by the Warden of the Cinque Ports under this Warrant,
if they wanted any compensation for their own costs to be paid out of
"the proper shippes and goodes of the pyrats or sea rovers" they have
caught, could do so only "after they have been thereof attaynted in the
[form] of lawe as shall be thought convenyent by the [officials] of our
Exchequier."'"7 The procedure Was set out in a series of commissions:
Imprimis that the pyrats taken maye be brought to the next port, and
there presented to the Vice Admiral, . . . or the next justice of the
peace, who shall send them to the nexte gaol, their [sic: ther (there)?]
to remayne untill they be tryed by order of justice.
That the shippes and goods and merchandizes in the possession of the
pyrats be ...valued by the oth of fower honest, skilfull, and expert
persons .. .and then delyvered to the custodie of the said customer
. .., their to remayne unto such tyme yt maybe appear how much
thereof shall appertaine to these pyrats, and how much to others. 7
"Customer" apparently meant "customs enforcer," i.e., person holding a
173. Id. at 216-217.

174. Id. at 217.
175. Id. at 218, setting out a sample commission.
license to patrol the coast and see to the enforcement of English import
laws. The word "pyrat" seems to have been applied to smugglers as well
as those whose acts fell within the legal terms used in the legislation of
Henry VIII quoted above.
The term "pirate" was used also to cover Englishmen holding foreign
commissions as "privateers" without the Queen's permission. In a Procla-
mation of 1575 the situation is clearly described:
[Hier Majestie's will and pleasure is that none of her subjects should
entermeddle in anie quarrells of anie forraigne prince or subjects, ei-
ther on thone side or thother, (speciallie by sea), without her Majes-
tie's license . . . Because now of late, under pretence of those for-
raigne services, manie piracies be dailie committed and done, yea in
her Majestie's owne ports, and a great number of maryners . . . be
torned from good subjects to be pirates . . . And because her
Heighnes hathe further bin informed that divers of her officers . . .
have wincked often at theis disorders . . . express warning to all her
Heighnes' officers that whosoever shall be hereafter founde to be neg-
ligent in the apprehending of suche malefactors in the execution of
this proclamation, or shall wincke at their doinges, . . . shall not onlie
lose their offices, but shall incurr her Majestie's further displeasure,
and be suerlie punished . . .17
This Proclamation apparently rested on the assumption that "piracy"
was not illegal at international law but only at English municipal law, and
that the English jurisdiction was felt to be grounded in the relationship
between subject and sovereign, not in any jurisdiction over the acts of
foreigners. Some territorial aspect to jurisdiction seems to be implied by
the failure to distinguish between acts done in "her Majestie's owne
ports" as well as in the narrow seas (which were, in any case, regarded as
within English prescriptive jurisdiction even if only to exclude foreign
ships or make them as a legal unit obey English law without actually ap-
plying English law within them) and in the Warrant issued at about the
same time to the Warden of the Cinque Ports mentioning "oure
streames." "Piracy" seems to have meant robbery or some other crime
listed in the legislation of Henry VIII within the jurisdiction given then to
Admiralty Commissions, and not acts done by foreigners outside of that
jurisdiction. As noted above, that jurisdiction was territorial and ex-
tended to English flag vessels, but, despite the learned arguments of the
minority in Regina v. Keyn, did not at this time in practice extend to
foreign flag vessels on the high seas or foreigners within foreign vessels in
English seas.
The notion that persons holding a foreign license might be enemies
but not criminals even if acting on board English vessels or against En-
glish vessels, even if acting in English rivers and portions of the seas, may
be seen in the restriction to English subjects of the terms of the Procla-
mation of 1575. In approving the draft Warrant of 1577 Lord Burghley,
176. Id. at 202-204.

the head of Elizabeth's administrative office, indicated that this was his
conception. He wrote to the Warden of the Cinque Ports, Lord Cobham,
that if there were peace between England and Spain the entire fuss would
subside "for lack of victims." ' Further evidence that the word "pirate"
was applied in 1577 without specific meaning at international law exists
in a note by David Lewes, an Admiralty judge apparently consulted by
Lord Burghley in this matter. At the bottom of a draft letter of assistance
to Sir William Morgan ordering her Majesty's officials to help him pre-
pare for his voyage of discovery and "also (if occasion so serve) to serve
against the Turkes and Infydells," Lewes wrote "Instede of this make a
permission to take pyrates, according to her Majestie's warrant."' 7 8 It is
hard to see how "Turkes and Infydells" were necessarily criminals at En-
glish law or how English law extended to places in which the discovery of
unknown lands might be made. And there is no evidence at all that
"Turkes and Infydells" were conceived at that time as necessarily viola-
tors of international law in Europe. Indeed, it would seem that Lewes'
note was not a legal translation of Morgan's request, but a denial of that
request as it might apply to "Turkes and Infydells," restricting Morgan's
authority to whatever authority was given to commissioners under the
warrant of 1577.
The needs of English commerce and possibly imperial policy seem to
have influenced Lewes, and two years later, in 1579, he issued a legal
opinion in which the earlier documents other than the Proclamation of
1569 were ignored and the most expansive statement of English jurisdic-
tion was given to the Lord High Admiral:
First it is lawful for every man, by the lawes of the sea, to apprehend
and take pyrats, being public enemies to all estates, without authority
or commission.
Secondly, the Queen's Majesty for proclamation published in Aprill
ano 110 regni sui [15691, hath declared and denounced all pyrats and
rovers upon the seas to be out of her protection, and lawfully to be by
any person taken, punished, and suppressed with extremity.
Thirdly, the first and principall part of the Lord Admirall's office by
law is, and ever hath been, to clear the jurisdiction apperteyning to
his office, being the sea, of pyrats and rovers haunting the same; in
respect whereof he hath, and ever hath had their goods and chattels,
being condemned and atteynted for the same.
Fourthly, by his Lordship's letters patents it may appeare that' he
hath a more ample and larger power than to set forth ships to take
pyrats.'79
The implementation of this opinion, which seems to have no legal argu-
ment in it to support its conclusions of law, indicates that it was not
177. Id. at 218, note by MARSDEN paraphrasing Burghley's letter.

178. Id. at 220-221.
179. Id. at 235-236.
taken seriously as a statement of international law by the Crown. Shortly

after it was issued, Elizabeth complained to Lewes as an Admiralty judge,
Sir Gilbert Gerrard as Attorney General, and 13 others involved in the
enforcement of the law, that the 1577 warrant had not worked well. In-
stead of simply instructing the Admiral to suppress "piracy" by seizing
"pirates" wherever he found them under the general law of the sea or as
outlaws under English law as Lewes's opinion seems to have urged, she
stiffened the enforcement in England of the English procedures by pro-
viding for small Commissions consistently with the statute of Henry VIII:
To enquire searche and trie out ... by oathes of twelve good men or
otherwise by all waies and meanes you can devise of all manner of
person or persons that have offended ... contrarie to the lawes and
statutes of this our realme or equitie and justice . . .,10
The possibility that "equitie and justice" was intended to include inter-
national law seems to have been overborne by the need to dispose of the
property of the "pirates," however defined, under the forms of English
law. Those forms were essential to the prosperity of the Admiral however
inconsistent with the view Lewes might have had as to the legal justifica-
tions at international law for individuals unlicensed by the Crown to seize
"pirates." When a fearless adventurer like Sir Walter Ralegh was in-
volved, there was no thought of his simply seizing "pirate" goods any
place. His appointment in 1585 to be "Vice Admiral" was restricted to
"the countie of Cornwall and the sea quoasts thereunto adjoyning," and
he was required to post bond against the possibility that he might fail to
make true account "of all suche piratts' goods, concelmentes, profitts, and
casualties, as shall happen to growe and rise within the precincte of the
said Viceadmirallshippe." Fully half of the "pirate" goods coming to him
in his new post was to go to his political senior, the Lord Admiral.' 81 And
in 1589 an Order in Council was issued that all English captures, with no
exceptions, must be submitted to an Admiralty court to have the lawful-
ness of the prize adjudged; failure to abide by the procedure meant that
the buyers got no title and the commission under which the prize was
taken was to be considered void.' 82
There are a number of documents relating then to the growth of the
English law regarding prize and commissions, letters of marque and repri-
sal under the centralized administration Lord Burghley organized for
Queen Elizabeth. In them there is no indication that "pirates" might be
taken without a commission, 83 and by 1599 there is some indication that
the word "pirate" was acquiring yet another meaning in English, as a ge-
180. Id. at 227-229.

181. Id. at 235-236.
182. Id. at 252.
183. After Elizabeth was succeeded by James I in 1601, there was a further tightening
of the administration, and commissions to companies engaged in normal mercantile voyages
in the Mediterranean or along the African coast began specifically to include authority to
capture "pyrates." Id. at 377-378.
DEN. J. INT'L L. & POL'Y VOL . 15:2,3
neric term carrying with it the implication of criminality and applied to

English captains who ignored the rules under which the Admiral made his
living:
[H]er Majestie now commaundeth, that whosoever shall herafter in-
termeddle with, or take at sea, any shippe or vessell coming from, or
going to, any port or haven belonging to the sayd Seigneurie of Ven-
ice, or Grand Duke of Tuskane, and shall break the bulke of the
goodes of any such shipp or vessell, (though the prise be lawfull),
before the same shalbe adjudged good prize in the high court of the
Admiralty, such offendors shalbe executed as pirates, and the shippe,
with the prize also, shalbe forfeited to her Majestie.' 4
4. Coke's Synthesis
The relationship between the English municipal law regarding

"piracy" and the international law of "piracy," if there was any before
1600, received attention at the most prestigious levels of English munici-
pal law in 1615 when Sir Edward Coke, Chief Justice of England at the
Common Law criminal court of King's Bench, presided over two cases in
which "piracy" was an issue. The reports of these cases by Rolle are im-
portant to an understanding of the English conception of "piracy" as the
word entered common legal usage and England became the world's great-
est sea power.
Marche's Case, alias Palachie's Case,iss concerned a capture of a
Spanish ship by a Moroccan official during a time when England regarded
Morocco and Spain as legally at war.' 8" Acknowledged as a subject of the
King of Morocco, Palachie represented to the court that:
He is the Moroccan Ambassador to the Netherlands and that on the
sea he captured a Spanish ship (there being war between the King of
Barbary [sic] & the King of Spain) and then coming with the ship in
England, & thereupon the Spanish Ambassador complained against
him as a Pirate, & diverse Civil Law experts were commanded by the
King [of England] to give their opinions on the matter. They agree
that an Ambassador is immune from local law by the law of nature &
of Nations, but if he commits any offense against the law of nature or
of reason, he loses his immunity; not so if he offends only a positive
law of any particular country, such as laws regarding clothing, etc.
And many other questions were answered by the civilians; but as we
[the panel] 87 and other common law Justices are asked for our opin-
184. Id. at 300, Proclamation of 1599.

185. 1 Rolle 175 (1615) K.B. Easter Term. An English version sub noma.The King
Against Marsh is reprinted in 3 B.I.L.C. 767-769.
186. The captor was "Sam. Palachie." "Joseph Pallache" is mentioned in FISHER, supra
note 82, at 175, as the Moroccan commander of an Atlantic fleet three of whose prizes
reached England in 1614.
187. It is not clear whose words are thus reported by Rolle. Sir Edward Coke and Sir
John Doddridge are identified by Rolle as members of the panel. Coke gives some details
lacking in Rolle's more or less official report. Apparently the Spanish Ambassador had com-
ions, we should say that the civilians have missed the point, because
the Defendant is being tried here for piracy, and being tried under the
statute of 28 Henry VIII cap. [15? The text has a blank space here],
which says that piracy should be tried as a felony committed on land
under the common law. And what is charged as piracy here is not
piracy nor would it be even a felony had it been committed on land
[the report repeats some words here and seems slightly garbled] be-
cause it is legal for one enemy to capture another on land. According
to our opinion and the relevant statute [which is cited] we hereby rule
accordingly, that is anybody wants to bring charges against another
under the pertinent statute [citing another] he who is robbed must
prove that he himself was a legal friend of our Lord the King, and
that he who robbed him was within the jurisdiction of our Lord the
King or in legal friendship, because if the taking was by an enemy it
was not robbery but lawful capture. As to Palachie's Case, we agree
with the civilians that the [Spanish] Ambassador could proceed
against him civilly for the goods that are here, for those are in friendly
territory, (R[olle]: I question whether it seems that by the law of na-
tions an enemy can legally take from another [in neutral territory?])
Dod. suggests that rights of reprisal might be significant; Coke sug-
gests that if goods were taken illegally and not restored, the King [of
England] might simply return them.' 8 8 Coke and Dod. also said that
nobody could be hanged for piracy based on robbery on the Thames
[River] because that is within an English county [thus outside the Ad-
miral's jurisdication?]. "
In the second case, Hildebrand, Brimston, & Baker's Case,' 90 English
plained directly to the King's Council, which referred the case to the Chief Justice (Coke),
the Master of the Rolls (Doddridge) and Sir Daniel Dun (judge of Admiralty). "And the said
referees heard the Counsel learned both in the Common and Civil Laws, on both sides on
two several days in this Term: and after conference between themselves, and with others,
these points were resolved..." COKE, FOURTH INSTITUTE xxvi at 152-154.
188. Id. at 154. The major doubts reported by Rolle were resolved in favor of Palachie
on the basis of a precedent pronounced by Lord Popham in King's Bench, 1605, in which a
Dutchman landing captured Spanish goods in England while England was at peace with
both Holland and Spain, was supported. According to Coke's summary: "It was resolved by
the whole Court of the King's Bench upon conference and deliberation, that the Spaniard
had lost the property of the goods for ever, and had no remedy for them in England." Coke
summarized the law:
[H]e that will sue to have restitution of goods robbed at Sea, ought by Law to
prove two things. First, that the Sovereign of the plaintiff was at the time of
the taking in amity with the King of England. Secondly, that he that took the
goods was at the time of the taking in amity with the Sovereign of him whose
goods were taken: for if he which took them was in enmity with the Sovereign
of him whose goods were taken, then it was no depredation or robbery, but a
lawful taking, as every enemy might take of another.
It seems significant that Coke does not mention commissions or letters of marque and repri-
sal to authorize the taking.
189. PALACHIE'S CASE, supra note 185. The translation from the French law of the time
is mine. The English version seems obscure in places and not to follow the original French
law.
190. 1 Rolle 285 (1615) K.B., Hilary Term.
shipowners were trying to recover their ship in an in rem proceeding at

Admiralty. The ship and cargo had been captured by "pirates." The peti-
tioners sought the intervention of the King's Bench Common Law court
to prohibit further Admiralty proceedings, apparently fearing the Admi-
ral's interest in "pirate" goods would make it difficult for them to recover
what they felt was theirs.
Those men [petitioners] were the owners of a ship, and sent it to the
Indies to trade. On the high sea the sailors took the ship through
"Piracy" (as is assumed in the Admiralty court) and as the ship re-
turned here to the Thames the Admiral seized it and all that is on it
as "pirate goods," claiming it all for himself under the terms of his
Royal warrant, and the merchants are taking the sails and tackling
out of the ship and are suing for them in the Admiralty court. The
Petitioners now pray for a "Prohibition" to that court, to stop the
action. Coke agrees that the Admiralty has, by the grant of the King,
all "Pirate goods;" i.e., the property of pirates. But the Admiralty
does not have the goods which pirates took from other men, because
that is not within the Royal grant; the owners have those things. And
if the Admiralty wants those goods, it may not sue for them in prize
because they are within the body of a county of England, that is, on
the Thames. Dod.: If a man borrows a horse, and commits a robbery
while riding it, the horse is not forfeit; so here, the ship is not forfeit
simply because those who were in the ship committed piracy. Coke
agreed, and he asked the Petitioners if they were convicted of piracy;
to which they replied that nobody had been convicted. So the Prohibi-
tion was granted on the ground that the taking had been within the
body of a county of England.''
It seems plain from both these cases that Coke was primarily concerned
with the division of jurisdiction in England between the Admiralty courts
and the Common Law courts; that to him "piracy" was simply the Admi-
ralty word for an offense against the law of England that was based on
the "Civil Law," i.e., the Roman law based system that English courts
with extra-territorial reach applied to transactions occurring outside Eng-
land, and not the Common Law; that it carried legal results at the Civil
Law which were not the same as the legal results the same action would
have drawn at Common Law.
In summarizing the legal situation long after these cases were de-
cided, Coke addressed "Piracies, Felonies, Murders and Confederacies
committed in or upon the Sea" by first noting that James I's amnesty for
felons given on his coronation in 1602 did not extend to pirates because
theirs was not an offense at Common Law, but at Civil Law, outside the
kingdom, without the legal result of forfeiture of land or corruption of
"bloud" (i.e., disinheriting the children).' 92 His entire discussion of the
substance of the offense is based on the technical construction of statu-
tory English law except for a major assertion that only subjects of Eng-
191. Translation from Rolle's law French is mine.

192. COKE, supra note 163, XLIX, at 111.
land could legally be tried for "piracy." To Coke "piracy" at Common

Law was a type of "petit treason," and those who are not subject to the
King of England cannot break the tie of allegiance, since there is no such
tie, therefore they cannot commit treason, therefore, with only minor ex-
ceptions, there cannot be a foreigner guilty of "piracy. ' 193 Since resident
foreigners, denizens of the realm, do come within the allegiance of the
King for some purposes, it might appear that Coke's language is some-
what too general and his conclusion too broad, but since "piracy" cannot
occur within the realm, where the Common Law applies to the exclusion
of Civil Law, that exception would not apply and Coke's analysis seems
beyond dispute. The effect of Coke's approach, which seems to set out the
traditional English position as reached by a judge concerned with ques-
tions of jurisdiction and limiting the Crown's discretion, is simply to
make "piracy" the legal word of art that Admiralty tribunals and com-
missions set up under the Act of 1536 applied to some but not all of the
"crimes" listed in that Act. As a kind of "petty treason," it would seem
that all cases of "mutiny" in an English vessel, i.e., a vessel with a master
whose authority over the ship's company and passengers is fixed by En-
glish law, could be denominated "piracy." Also, an attack by one English
vessel on another could be denominated "piracy" since both vessels would
have been conceived to have a legal existence deriving from a common
superior, the Admiral or the Crown, and an attack by one on the other
would necessarily involve a breach of legal subordination by the attacking
vessel unless otherwise authorized by the Admiral or Crown. But, if the
law regarding "piracy" were part of the criminal law of England and de-
rived from the feudal conception of treason, it could apply only to those
within the allegiance of the Crown in England, just as King John's Nor-
man knights could not commit "treason" by attacking John's English
subjects, whatever else their acts may have meant legally. Under this
"treason," personal allegiance, conception, the English Admiral's jurisdic-
tion, and thus the jurisdiction of Commissions set up under the Act of
1536, would apply only to English vessels, not to foreign vessels, in navi-
gable waters (of course, all vessels infra corpus comitatus would be sub-
ject to the Common Law courts of the Shire, not the Admiralty at all). To
Coke and the Common Law judges of England in the early 17th century,
Admiralty jurisdiction itself must then have seemed in a sense territorial,
with English ships filling the role of counties in England, and foreign ves-
sels being ruled by the municipal laws of whatever countries gave their
captains authority to command the ships' companies and passengers.
One major gap must have disturbed Coke, although no mention of it
appears in his known writings. What law governs the actions of a foreign
vessel attacking an English ship, or an English vessel without license at-
tacking a foreign ship? In both those cases, the breach of allegiance ap-
parently necessary before the label "piracy" could attach, would be pre-
193. Id. at 113.

sent only in the case of an Englishman aboard the foreign attacker or the
fortuitous presence of an Englishman aboard the foreign vessel attacked.
In the first case, it would seem that the assault on an English vessel
would likely have been analogized to a similar assault in an English
county's territory; the foreign attacker would have been guilty of an as-
sault or robbery within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty under the Act of
1536, thus triable by a Commission; but the crime would not have been
"universal" or "law of nations" "piracy," it would have been "assault" or
"robbery" or some Admiralty term, perhaps "piracy," equivalent to that.
In the second case, there would have been no crime in England unless the
breach of the terms of a commission or letters of mark and reprisal justi-
fying the forfeiture of a deposit or other civil penalty. The gap in English
law and jurisdiction here seems to have been the basis for the difficulties
Queen Elizabeth's administration tried to solve by the Warrant of 1577,
and the path by which the vernacular word "piracy" began to enter the
legal vocabulary applied to Englishmen injuring foreigners abroad.
It should be noted that foreigners aboard English vessels were, by
Coke's notion, "denizens" within the allegiance of the King of England,
thus there was a territorial basis in the nationality of a vessel for attach-
ing English jurisdiction to some foreigners. Coke's conception of the "high
seas" (or navigable waters) did not apparently make them part of any
"territorial" part of England or trace the Admiral's jurisdiction to any
concept of territoriality other than the analogy between a vessel itself and
a bit of English territory for the purposes of jurisdiction, and the notion
that Common Law courts' jurisdiction stopped at the edge of navigable
waters. The Admiral did not rule the seas, only English vessels on the
seas and perhaps Englishmen in foreign vessels for some limited purposes
where they, as the "denizens" of a foreign sovereign, had to satisfy two
allegiances and could be the victims of English "pirates" in the tradi-
tional sense as persons against whom a "petty treason" at English law
could be committed.
From this point of view, the later notion that to be "piracy" there
had to be an exchange between two vessels of different legal subordina-
tion was a complete reversal of the "petty treason" definition in English
Common Law as applied in Admiralty. Also, from this point of view, the
notion was excluded that England ruled the British seas as a matter of
territorial right as Grotius might have argued. The Grotian view of mare
clausum might have had considerable appeal to statesmen, but required a
reconsideration of the fundamentally feudal English conceptions of juris-
diction. It was, of course, out of these inconsistencies that the confusions
of Regina v. Keyn grew, as the English assertions of territorial rights in
the "Narrow Seas" (the English Channel), the North Sea and elsewhere,
or even in the three-mile strip of navigable waters surrounding the Brit-
ish Isles, were not matched by legislation placing those "territories"
within the body of a county or within the "territorial" jurisdiction of the
Admiral as the law-giver for English ships.
5. Summary
Based on Queen Elizabeth's Warrants of 1569 and 1577, and the con-
ceptions of territoriality that seem to underlie them, and the summary by
Coke in the reign of James I some fifty years later emphasizing a breach
of feudal personal ties as the root of the conception of the substantive
crime of "piracy," it seems clear that later English assertions of jurisdic-
tion over foreign "pirates" for their acts against other foreigners, or even
against English vessels abroad, did not grow from any "natural law" con-
cept of universal jurisdiction over thieves, or the universality of property
rights. The assertions grew from the impact on English vessels or English
persons of foreign depredations, the impact on an English ship being
analogized to an impact amounting to physical presence in an English
county, and the Admiral's jurisdiction being that of a county judge with
regard to events within English traditional jurisdiction but outside the
physical bounds of an English county. It seems that this conception is
also what gave rise in later years to the notion, first expressed by Sir
Leoline Jenkins in 1680,111 that to be "piracy" two ships had to be in-
volved; one of them being a ship flying the flag of the country whose "Ad-
miral" was seeking a jurisdictional basis to hear the case. There is appar-
ently no basis in the early English law for "universal" jurisdiction over
foreigners abroad in connection with acts denominated "piracy."
One other case before the King's Bench at about this time appears to
have ended the question of the legal status of the Barbary states as far as
concerns English Common Law. In 1617 an Englishman named Howe was
alleged to have sent his servant, Saddocke, with a known counterfeit jewel
to "Barbary," where the jewel was sold for 800 pounds English money to
the "Roy de Barbary." The King of Barbary, after discovering the fraud,
imprisoned Southerne, another Englishman there, until Southerne repaid
the value of the fraud. The transaction appears to be similar in sense to
holding a foreign merchant, through a capture under letters of marque
and reprisal, responsible for the value of goods wrongfully taken by his
countryman, except that there appears to have been no attempt first to
exhaust the English remedies, perhaps because the "King of Barbary" did
not choose to submit himself to English remedies as a matter of royal
pride. Southerne then sued Howe for the amount of his ransom. Lord
Popham threw the case out saying that there should be no legal indemni-
fication to the plaintiff on the basis of his imprisonment without convic-
tion in Barbary because that was merely an act of a "barbarous King," for
which he should seek remedy through a petition to the Crown, not
through the courts.' 5 Whatever else might be doubtful in the conclusion
194. Charge to a Grand Jury, 18 Feb. 1680, 167 Eng. Rep. 561.
195. Southern v. Home, 2 Rolle 5 [1617]. There were other grounds for the decision,
such as the rule caveat emptor (let the buyer beware), under which Howe and his servant
did no legal wrong to the King of Barbary, and thus could not be compelled to bow before
the foreign law under which the fraud (at least when worked against the King) would nullify
the deal.
or reasoning of the case, the dictum that the "barbarous King" was none-
theless a King for being barbarous, implying that the Barbary states were
states for purposes of English municipal law, and their rulers entitled to
the dignity of foreign sovereigns, was clear. The case was frequently cited
afterwards for that proposition, despite the fact that the same result
would have flowed had the King been merely a pirate chief (why should
Howe have been responsible for the lawless acts of an outlaw any more
than for the lawful, or legally unchallengeable, acts of a King?).' 96
From this brief survey, it would seem that there were several differ-
ent conceptions of "piracy" reflected in the English municipal law of the
late 16th and early 17th centuries and, within those conceptions, several
major issues of definition. One conception, expressed most persuasively
by Lord Coke, was that "piracy" was not at all part of the Common Law
of England, but was part of the "Civil Law" enforced in England in ap-
propriate cases. To Coke, those cases were only those to which English
concepts of jurisdiction gave purview to English officials responsible for
enforcing the Civil Law. With regard to "piracy," he used the word to
refer to a host of Civil Law offenses within the jurisdiction of the English
Admiral by tradition and Royal delegation. That jurisdiction gave the
Admiralty courts purview over offenses that would be Common Law of-
fenses had they been committed with the "corpus comitatus," the body of
an English county, and included any forcible takings, whether properly
considered "robbery," "murder" or, apparently, any other violation of the
King's peace. The people subject to that jurisdiction were those within
the King's "ligeance," including English subjects wherever they might be,
and foreigners acting within the territorial jurisdiction of the Admiral,
i.e., in English ships. It did not apply to foreigners who acted under com-
missions of their own sovereigns, regardless of where and who their vic-
tims. Nor did it apply to foreigners without commissions acting beyond
the "territorial" reach of English jurisdiction (including ships adminis-
tered under English law). To Coke, the jurisdictional rules and ties of
allegiance were the essence of the matter; the law defining the substance
of the offense could be changed by statute.
To David Lewes and presumably other Admiralty judges and offi-
cials, the word "piracy" carried much wider connotations. There appeared
to them to be a wider general law forbidding "piracy" under which the
Admiral and his delegates could act, if not indeed any person with or
without commission. But what the precise definition of "piracy" was,
whether it included all "Turkes & Infydells" regardless of their political
organization or specific activities, and what happened to "pirate" goods
once captured, were questions they seem to have left unanswered. Their
196. Again, as so often in this study, an interesting side-track must be resisted. For a
full understanding of the background against which the classification of the "King of Bar-
bary" as a king and nothing else (he was not argued to be a "pirate" as far as appears from
Rolle's report of Southern v. Home) a full course in English commercial, criminal and con-
stitutional law of the early 17th century would be necessary.
1987 THE LAW OF PIRACY 233
conception seems to have derived from the use of the term "piracy" in
vernacular English, taking what seemed politically useful, and ignoring
those parts of the common usage, like reference to "lawful prize," that
seemed to get in the way. The highest officials of England seem from time
to time to have adopted this common usage, but despite Lewes's position
on the Admiralty court and as a Commissioner under the statute of 28
Henry VIII, his general notions appear never to have been translated into
legal documents or English legal practice.
To Sir Julius Caesar and other Admiralty judges, the concept of
"piracy" was important as part of the Civil Law of property applied
through in rem proceedings of English Admiralty courts. There seemed to
be a tendency to use the word in connection with property seized within
Admiralty jurisdiction without the authority of a commission or letters of
marque and reprisal. But the legal result of that usage was connected
with the disposition of the property, not the person who seized it. The
usage did not reflect a concept of criminal law, but of property law; the
16th and 17th century English Civil Law version of the ancient Roman
law of postliminium.

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Denver Journal of International Law & Policy

The Law of Piracy

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/djilp

The Law of Piracy

Confederate States commerce raiders and privateers during the American

1. A.C. SPEARING, CRITICISM AND MEDIEVAL POETRY 7 (2d ed. 1972).

cluded that suppressive activities by the British Navy might be justifiable

Instead, the original Greek uses derivatives of the word "diapertho" or

17. DEMOSTHENES, DE HALONNESO, 2 ON POSTLIMINIUM, quoted in Greek in 2 PHILLIP-

Thucydides' description of political life in the Aegean area rests not

28. 2 POLYBIuS, THE HISTORIES 461 (W.R. Paton trans. 1954).

"peirato" or one of its derivatives is used in the original Greek,

36. PLUTARCH, supra note 34, at 177.

think of putting to death ...[but] determined to transfer the men

38. PLUTARCH, supra note 33, at 181-187.

44. Livy, THE EARLY HISTORY OF ROME, supra note 20 at 69-71.

ently by order of Marc Antony in 43 B.C. in the aftermath of the murder

Perhaps the best evidence of the Roman jurists' actual conception of

C. The Reorganizationof the Renaissance

For a thousand years after Justinian the word "pirate" appears to

59. See RAFFLES, supra note 2.

found by the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary is in the second

In the merry town of Feversham,

Men of his own country

There is not any Kingdom,

But their cursed villanies,

72. 33 NAVAL SONGS AND BALLADS, 25-29 (1907).

cessful attempt by Parliament to ransom 1500 Christian captives in 1624.

that cursed crew of pirates.""8 Again, it is unclear precisely who or where

bly by analogy to the classical "pirates" of Cilicia in the Eastern Mediter-

2. "Piracy" Enters the Legal Vocabulary as "Outlawry"

in the term "enemy"). Our meaning is that these persons themselves

Nor is it clear why he denied the status of lawful enemy to rebels,

3. The Legal Order and Outlawry

The first writer of lasting eminence to convert the confusions of the

The implications of Gentili's position were great. If it were generally

b. Some Technicalities: Property Law and Privateering

"Postliminium" was the Roman law word of art to denote that

own sovereigns to protect. Thus, the issuance of letters of marque and

100. 1 GENTILI, supra note 96, Bk. I, ch iv, at 15.

Finally, in a case involving English possessors of "pirate" property

103. See 1 GENTILI, supra note 104, iv.

c. Naturalist Theory: Law as a Moral Order Governing Policy

Gentili's approach was not universally adopted by scholars. Hugo

mutually maintain a sort of equality. The reason, according to Grotius, is

110. Id. at 631.

a legal word of art seems to focus not on recognition or the derivation of

Senate conferring monarchical powers on Pompey in 68 B.C. is not cited.

as well as political action lost persuasiveness and effectiveness as it de-

D. English Municipal Law and Piracy in the Renaissance

It is beyond the powers of a sole scholar in reasonable time to ana-

not convincingly argued in any known source despite the extraordinary

to the present writer, appear to support the view insisted upon by

129. I MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 99-100.

Apparently private recapture, self-help, was the normal remedy of

133. 1 MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 2.

to the equivalent of restitution for injury done by a foreigner, and to

138. Id. at 19, (revoking a letter of "marque or reprisal" (marquandiseu gagiandi) in

the Common Law and non-legal words "robberies, depredations, discords

143. 1 MARSDEN, supra note 97, at 100-101.

148. Id. at 146-147.

153. Id. at 441-443; 26 AM. J. INT'L L. 913-915 (Spec. Supp. 1932).

to iij or iiij such other substantiall persons as shall be named or ap-